


The Idiot's Guide To Petty Theft (Or What Not to Do When Staying at Your Boss's for the Weekend)

by BMP



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Magnificent Seven AU: ATF, U.S. Navy SEALs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BMP/pseuds/BMP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JD spends a weekend at Chris' ranch house where he breaks some rules, and maybe a friendship or two, as he tries to piece together Chris' closely guarded history with the US Navy SEALs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Idiot's Guide To Petty Theft (Or What Not to Do When Staying at Your Boss's for the Weekend)

**Author's Note:**

> I wish to thank MOG for the ATF AU, she came up with it, and graciously lets others play there. Special thanks to Charlotte for beta-ing, and to GSister for encouraging, and all around nagging. Without her patience and insistence, these stories would never have been. This is not a new story, just newly archived here.

J. D. Dunne knew from an English class he had once taken that Dante had envisioned a hell with many levels. Ezra had once loudly professed that surely one of those levels had to be being forced to sit in the special-issue team surveillance van while Buck Wilmington and Chris Larabee bickered like they did. Over problems that no one else really seemed to understand. In terms no one else seemed to understand. Related to events that no one else really seemed to understand. Nor were they ever likely to have any of it explained.

As J. D. approached the front steps of the old white farmhouse, he was pretty sure that if Dante were to add another level to hell, this should be it: A weekend forced to stay at the Ranch. Chris Larabee's home. With Senior ATF Agent Christopher Scary-as-Hell, Master of the Fine Art of Intimidation, Flash tempered, Fluent in over six thousand ways to inflict pain and suffering with one finger or less, Able to reduce hardened criminals to sobbing confessions in a single glare, Larabee. Government agent, Navy SEAL, law enforcement legend, control obsessed psychopath, and also--not to be underestimated in this volatile mix of titles--J.D. Dunne's boss. All weekend. And with no backup in sight.

J.D. had tried several times to explain the problem to Buck, to no avail. Either the man really didn't understand or he just didn't want to. In either case, trying to wring sympathy from him for this miserable, uncomfortable situation was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

Small wonder. For Buck Wilmington, Team Seven's second in command, spending a weekend at the ranch was as normal as breathing. The place was as much home to him as the townhouse he and J.D. shared. How was J.D. supposed to explain to Buck that spending the weekend at Chris's ranch while the townhouse was fumigated, was like inviting disaster, throwing the door wide and saying "Come on in!"? J.D. Dunne was definitely doomed. And Buck, who had gone whistling off to some boating adventure with some flight attendant, didn't care one damn bit.

"Doomed," J.D. repeated gloomily to himself, as he shifted his duffel bag to his left hand and dug in his hip pocket for the key to the front door. He paused on the step.

He knew he was being stupid about this. In the scant three years since he had managed to wheedle his way onto Larabee's fledgling team, over the protests of several voices of experience, since he had rattled out his gratitude in an overly zealous handshake and an embarrassing promise of "You won't be sorry," he had more or less given up on trying to impress Chris Larabee and settled for earning the man's confidence instead--which had been damn hard enough.

In all that time, he had been here, to this house, with his teammates, more times than he could count. They had had about a hundred barbecues. They had watched about a thousand games on the TV. Hell, they had bought Larabee the TV. They had keys to the house and alarm codes. They kept food in his fridge. They kept their horses in his barn. They came and went more or less as they pleased. Trouble was, telling himself he was being stupid wasn't helping. Trouble was, the inevitable fact that some time in the next 48 hours he was doomed to say or do something stupid. Categorically, undeniably, embarrassingly--but hopefully not fatally--stupid. Like spill his Mountain Dew all over the leather sofa in Chris's den, he thought with a shudder. That had been two weeks ago. And J.D. was pretty sure that the arm was no longer sticky.

J.D.'s face flushed. Spilling his soda wasn't the worst of what he'd said and done here at this place.

Take that first time he had come here. Been _invited_ , according to J.D. Buck had snickered at that. "We don't get invited, kid," he had said. "We just show up." He was still snickering when they pulled into the driveway and J.D. evidently had said out loud the "Wow" he was thinking when he saw the white barn with black trim, the horses grazing in the paddock, tails swishing idly at flies, the neat yard, and the rambling old white farmhouse, with black trim to match the barn, or was the barn painted to match the house?

He remembered he was wondering that when he had first come in the front door. And he remembered how the thought vanished when he first stepped into the front hall and followed Buck into the kitchen.

Looking back he was not sure what he had expected of Chris Larabee's house. Something as Spartan as the man's office, perhaps, as austere as the man's own manner, as black and white as the man's view of the world. Certainly not a kitchen in blues and soft greys, with tiles to match, and granite countertops, and cabinets fully stocked and holding appliances that were fully functional.

As if that weren't enough to throw him, there was also the living room, where J.D. had followed Buck next. It was a large room where warm-colored hardwoods glowed, and where furniture pieces matched each other-- _and_ the rug. Even the wallpaper that marched in perfect alignment down the adjoining hallway seemed somehow to fit into an overall color scheme. There were pillows on the couches, logs stacked by the fireplace, and more than one soft-looking blanket folded within arm's reach of couch and recliner.

Who could blame J.D. for being caught off guard? He supposed he thought Larabee's house would look somewhat neglected. Too dusty maybe. Or too shiny maybe. Unlived in. Orderly, sure. Neat, yeah. But certainly not so, well, peaceful looking, or, well, to be honest, homey.

So, it was not what J.D. Dunne had expected. Unfortunately, his mouth had moved faster than his brain. He vividly remembered joking to Buck in his best Gabby Hayes, "This ain't your ordinary bachelor pad."

And he never could quite forget the way Chris had looked at him, and the odd flatness of his voice as he answered, "I'm not a bachelor."

J.D. still cringed to think of it. How he had remembered an instant too late for the information to be useful that Chris had had a wife and a son once, a wife and son whose murderer was still out there somewhere. And even though nothing had come of the comment, and nothing was ever said about it, though Buck had made some dumb joke and everyone had gone on with the afternoon, still the memory lingered.

So spilling Mountain Dew on the leather couch was not the stupidest thing J.D. had ever done here. Nor even the most embarrassing. Just the most recent.

Until now. Now he had a whole weekend to break his record, he thought morosely. It was practically inevitable. Only this time, there would be no Buck to deflect the fallout on his behalf.

He pulled the key sourly from his pocket. "J.D." The sound of the voice startled him nearly as much as the immediate realization that the man was standing almost right behind him. His hand jerked, and the key went flying across the small wooden porch and skittered into the faded doormat.

J.D. gritted his teeth and turned to see Chris Larabee less than four feet behind him.

"Mite jumpy aren't ya?" Chris observed. It was a statement. Not a question. Chris eyed him critically, head tilted slightly sideways in that way that always made J.D. feel like he was wearing see-through skin.

Backlit against the falling sun, Chris's expression was hard to read. But he was wearing his barn clothes, J.D. realized, seeing his chance to at least do some good before the flying fickle finger of fate boinked him in the butt.

"Just let me put my bag inside," J.D. said. "I'll come out and help."

"Already finished," Chris said in that flat tone of his. One lip twitched sardonically. "Buck must be rubbing off on you."

"Well, you know what Buck says," J.D. offered. "Timing is everything." It was his best imitation of their notorious surveillance expert. A second later he wondered why it was that Buck never felt like an idiot spouting that crap.

Apparently crap like that was a lot more amusing coming from Buck. Buck, at least, would have got a flicker of amusement, a smile maybe, perhaps even a grin. All J.D. got was a soft snort that sounded distinctly unimpressed.

He suppressed the urge to sigh and remembered that his keys were still lying on the wooden boards of the porch. He bent to get them, relieved to return to his original objective.

"Well, let me get the door anyway," he replied, more to break the uncomfortable pause than because something needed to be said. He retrieved the key and aimed it for the lock.

"It's unlocked," the voice said right behind him, so close that Chris reached around J.D. and shoved open the door.

J.D. felt the blood rise up into his cheeks. Of course the door was unlocked. Otherwise Chris would have locked himself out. And Chris Larabee wasn't likely to lock himself out of his own house. No. That was more like something J.D. would do.

He put his bag down in the foyer and turned awkwardly back to thank Chris for opening the door, deciding that a simple "Thanks again for letting me stay this weekend," would not be inappropriate. He had cleared his throat and started to speak before he realized he was speaking to the air. Chris had gone.

A moment later he remembered the barn chores and knew Chris had gone around to the back door. Chris Larabee would never bring his barn boots through the front hall. He remembered learning that lesson, too, and checked his sneakers hurriedly for mud in the treads.

They were clean. He toed them off onto the mat that stood by the front door for just that purpose and shut the door. Standing in his stocking feet on the hard wood floor he took stock. Exactly three minutes into his weekend stay at his boss and team leader's house and already he felt damn stupid.

Oh yes, he was most definitely doomed.

He moved into the kitchen and stuck his head in the fridge. His stomach growled loudly, complaining of neglect, as J.D. scanned the shelves: a half-empty package of hot dogs from last weekend; some stir fry tofu crap that probably belonged to Nathan; two full gallons of milk, some Cheese Whiz that had been there so long the gunk on the sides of the jar had gone crusty, a couple of take-out containers, their Styrofoam surfaces marked with the initials VT and BW, and one of them bearing a ball-point carved inscription that looked like "Touch This and I'll Rip Your Arms Off."--Oh yes--and a plastic container containing leftovers of Josiah Sanchez's Red Hot, Tonsil-Toasting, Turn-Your-Stomach-Lining-Inside-Out Chili.

J.D. grimaced and pushed the chili out of the way. Bad enough he was here for the duration. He wasn't going to spend the next 48 hours in the bathroom, too. He picked the hot dogs. And paused to consider how much discomfort just a little spoonful or two of the chili could really cause him. He could always add Cheez Wiz to lessen the burn. And onions. Gotta have onions. And a little mustard. He reached for the chili.

Part of his brain idly wondered whether he ought to ask Chris if he'd eaten yet, or at least offer to make him a chili dog. Did Chris eat chili dogs? Buck ate chili dogs. Did that mean Chris ate chili dogs?

He realized that he had never heard Chris return from the back mudroom. He pulled his head out of the refrigerator and nearly jumped out of his skin as a horrible, high-pitched rending sound screamed out through the closed garage door. He tripped on the bags of paper and plastic to be recycled as he tore open the garage door, hand already flying instinctively for his cell phone or his gun, neither of which he was wearing because he was no longer at work.

Chris spared a glance for J.D.'s less than graceful entrance into the garage, then returned his attention to a large plank and an exceptionally large and vicious-looking table saw. A pair of serviceable, if fairly ridiculous-looking, safety goggles hung down around his neck and thick gloves covered his hands. He regarded the board from several angles, replaced the goggles over his eyes, and sent the innocent board screaming past the whirling blade.

J.D. willed his heart to return to a normal, sane pace, as the saw blade slowed and stopped.

Chris pulled the safety goggles down to dangle around his neck, circled his newly cut board slowly before bending to inspect the cut more closely. He ran one hand gently across the surface, dusting away the sawdust, and pulled the board from the bench. He laid it carefully on a stack of other boards roughly the same size.

He turned back to J.D. and smiled lopsidedly. "Red cedar," Chris Larabee said with satisfaction, as if those two words said everything.

J.D. tried to see something special in a short stack of sawn boards. In the end, he sidestepped the issue entirely.

"You eat dinner yet?" J.D. asked casually, and hoped belatedly that Chris had not noticed his hurried rush to rescue his boss from unknown attackers in the garage.

Chris seemed to consider the question for a minute and glanced back at the boards as if actually weighing his options. Eat or saw. Have dinner or give J.D. another heart attack at the sound of unfamiliar and dangerous-looking power tools.

J.D. scowled. Geez, a guy ought to know if he's hungry or not. What was there to think about?

"All right," Chris said with a shrug. "Let me put these away."

With that, Chris pulled the plug and began carefully looping up the long orange cord. He covered the blade. When he began sliding the large table saw back toward a space along the wall beside a workbench and some other pieces of equipment that J.D. vaguely recalled seeing in a high school shop class, J.D. realized that the sooner he started helping, the sooner he might get to eat.

While Chris pushed the saw back into place, J.D. set to picking up wood scraps from the shop floor. Standing in the middle of the floor, he looked around for a scrap bin, or some other appropriate place to put them. Chris caught him looking and pulling off his gloves, pointed to a closed storage bin at the end of the workbench.  
"The scrap goes in there," he said.

"Oh," J.D. returned and headed for the bin, only to be stopped by Chris Larabee's hand reaching over his shoulder to pluck a small rectangular piece out of the center of the jumble of wood in J.D.'s arms and put it safely on the shelf with the other pieces Chris had cut. He didn't say anything. And neither did J.D. With the painfully familiar feeling of being five years old again and being banished to a kitchen chair so his mother could finish cleaning faster, J.D. hurriedly dumped the scrap pieces in the bin, replaced the lid and followed Chris up the garage steps and into the kitchen.

Together they cobbled together some chili cheese dogs, poured some drinks, and took it all into the living room to eat. Hands full of plate and drink, J.D. stared, perplexed, at the wooden coffee table and his own lack of a third arm. Chris saved him by tossing a paper beer mat onto the coffee table, so he could finally set his drink down.

Chris Larabee was borderline fanatical about glasses and woodwork. There used to be a stack of coasters in a basket under one of the end tables. Then Buck developed a habit of flinging them at the television when he did not like the play his team had made, when the wrong team scored points, when he disagreed with the ref's call, or when he just plain felt like it. As a result, one Saturday, all the good coasters completely disappeared and were replaced by a stash of paperboard beer mats advertising beers J.D. had never heard of and coming from countries J.D. barely knew existed--and doing far less damage when they hit the TV, other pieces of furniture, and, occasionally, teammates.

The drawback was that, now and then, Buck would read one of them, and it would spark him into a round of "Remember When", which frequently made the whole team cringe. J.D. was pretty sure the resulting smirk on Chris's face was just his way of getting revenge on the rest of them.

J.D. set his soda down carefully on the beer mat, noting that it didn't seem to matter that the table top did, in fact, bear some scars (all of them carefully filled in and polished) or that Buck and Vin had a habit of propping their feet up on it when Chris wasn't in the room, or that countless bowls of chips, pretzels, nuts, crackers and just about every other snack food had been set on it, spilled on it, and occasionally launched from it via Vin Tanner's ridiculously accurate finger-flicking skills. It was a point of fact. No drink--hot, cold, or room temperature--had ever been set down on that gleaming wooden surface without a coaster to protect it.

Balancing beverage and full plate with admirable grace, Chris settled himself into his recliner. J.D. sat with his plate on his lap in the exact center of the long empty sofa. By himself. He watched CNN playing on the television. And wished that Buck were here.

Chris did not speak to him for a solid forty-five minutes. He did not comment on the news reporters, on the news itself, or even on events actually related to their case load. He did not channel surf. And J.D. knew there was no hope of him putting on a nice re-run of the Simpsons or King of the Hill or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"I'll clean up," J.D. said, suddenly unable to stand either the relentless drone of the news or the relentless lack of conversation. He bounced up from the sofa, grabbed Chris's empty plate, and disappeared into the kitchen.

He loaded both plates into the dishwasher, then pulled them out again and rinsed them, all the while wondering what the point was of having to wash the dishes before putting them into a machine whose sole purpose was to wash the dishes. Really, that was a red herring. What he really was wondering was why it wasn't possible for Chris Larabee to make just a little effort to engage a guest in some form of polite conversation.

But then Chris Larabee wasn't particularly polite to the rest of the guys either. And, J.D. felt with a pang, J.D. wasn't exactly a guest. He lost his guest status the moment he received a key, so he could come and go as he pleased. And that meant something. Something important. No longer a guest. Now more like family.

And a person doesn't have to entertain family.

But still, J.D. groused to himself, having rinsed the plates properly now, a person could make the effort. Couldn't he? After all, if Vin or Buck were here, there'd be talk. There'd be teasing. There'd even be laughing, or at least smiling.

J.D. thought about that for a second. Chris did talk when Buck and Vin were around, right? At least some of the time. He was positive.

Granted, Chris Larabee and "small talk" didn't belong in the same sentence. And what Vin and Chris did most of the time couldn't hardly be called "conversation".

And Buck did most of the talking in just about any conversation he was involved in. But he'd actually seen Buck get Chris going a time or two. And through the glass doors, he'd seen the two of them side by side in the Adirondack chairs on the back deck, watching the backs of their heads bob and swivel, punctuated by the occasional wave of a hand or pointing of a beer bottle. And sometimes he'd even seen the two of them laugh so hard Buck had to wipe the tears off his face.

Yep, if Buck were here, there'd be talking. There'd be story telling. There'd be stupid jokes. There'd be teasing. And lying. And sarcastic remarks. There'd be life. Alive-ness. Liveliness. Not this irritating silence.

Crap.

J.D. was not Buck.

But if there was going to be any kind of conversation, he was going to have to start it.

He returned to the living room and to the sofa. Chris turned from the TV screen long enough to give him a scouring once-over.

"You don't have to clean up," Chris said pointedly.

The weather channel announced the local forecast.

The weather, J.D., thought, brightening. They could always talk about the weather for a few minutes.

"It's gonna rain tomorrow," he said, pointing at the screen.

Chris followed J.D.'s pointing finger to scan the rest of the report. "It'll be early," he said thoughtfully. "And light."

"Thought I'd go riding in the morning," J.D. said. He left the statement hanging.

Chris nodded. "Your horse could use the exercise."

Was that a jibe? A joke? Teasing?

"You want to come?" It was on the tip of J.D.'s tongue.

"Gonna take an early run," Chris said, interrupting J.D.'s thoughts.

Run. He meant running. Like exercising. Only far more masochistic.

Was that an invitation?

J.D. had never actually run with Chris. Only listened to Buck gripe about it. But Buck exaggerated a lot, too.

Vin ran with Chris. He seemed to like it. How bad could it be?

"Good idea," J.D. said. "I could use a run."

A sudden smirk cracked Larabee's face. And in the silence, J.D. could hear the words. _You? Run?_

"What?" J.D. demanded. "I run."

"Oh, you run," Chris said, the sarcasm now clear. He tossed J.D. the remote.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, snatching the remote out of the air. He'd passed every single fitness qual with flying colors. What did that mean: _"Oh, you run."_?

The smirk grew a little wider.

"You run," Chris said, kicking his footrest down and sliding out of his recliner. "But you don't like it."

"I..." the retort stopped.

Well, hell. The man was right. J.D. didn't like to run. He only did it to keep up with the job requirements. There were better ways to exercise anyway: like biking, like skating, like...well, like a lot of stuff. That wasn't the point.

"I keep in shape," J.D. retorted testily.

A small snort escaped from Larabee, as he headed for the stairs.

"I won't wake you," Chris said. "Help yourself to," he paused to give a backhanded wave in the general direction of the kitchen, "whatever."

J.D. was not to be derailed. "I do exercise," he snapped at Chris's back, as it disappeared up the stairs. And he muttered it once more into the empty room, as he flicked through the channels.

Where the hell were the re-runs of Buffy now that he had control of the TV?

He thought about popcorn.

Did Chris just call him out of shape?

By 4 AM, J.D. had reason to regret the chili dogs. Or maybe it was the corn chips. Or perhaps the salsa. Hard to tell. The only thing he could tell for certain was that he had heartburn. Heartburn! Despite the fact that he had been telling himself for well over an hour that people his age--strike that, ATF agents his age, ATF agents his age and in his kind of great shape--don't get heartburn.

At 4:45, he gave in to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He swore and swung his legs out of bed, nearly tripping on his own duffel bag as he shuffled across the floor toward the door, feeling his way in what was very nearly pitch dark, despite the fact that he knew from the chorus of twittering birds somewhere beyond the heavy curtains on his window that it had to be nearly dawn.

It was somewhat lighter in the hall, where the sliding glass doors in the living room let in the pale pre-dawn light. He shuffled across the hardwood floor, clumsily navigating the corner of the stair and tiptoed into the bathroom. He shut the bathroom door behind him, turned on the light so he could see, and set to rifling the medicine cabinet in search of Tums, Rolaids, any sort of cheap antacid really. Maybe a pink bottle of Pepto.

Larabee's medicine cabinet was a wonder to behold. To be fair, it was the guest bathroom. And therefore the guest medicine cabinet. And therefore the "guests", who weren't really guests at all, coming and going as they pleased and generally having the run of the house, were sort of tacitly expected to keep it straight. Which they didn't. So everybody just kept the doors to the medicine cabinet and to the cabinet below the sink, which housed the considerable overflow tightly shut. That included Chris, who was adamant that he was not their mother and was not going to clean up the medical supplies for them.

Nathan Jackson, the team medic, occasionally attempted to inventory and straighten up the boxes of Band-Aids, tubes of liniment and topical antibiotics, sports wraps and tapes, bottles of painkillers and over the counter medication and to throw out anything that had passed its expiration date.

It was good to be prepared, J.D. reflected, bent over and feeling his way irritatedly through a full basket under the sink, the acid burning its way up his throat now. But wouldn't it be better if a person could actually find the damn stuff he was looking for? He closed the cabinet under the sink and returned to the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, where he had started the search, pulling the door open much less patiently now.

Two bottles of pills and a tube of something spilled off the top two shelves. He reached for the pills, snagging one out of the air, while the other bounced off the sink and clattered loudly to the floor. The tube landed with a soft thud on the counter. He grumbled again and bent to pick up the other bottle, elated to discover it was the antacids he had been seeking--until he smacked his head on the corner of the cabinet door.

His heartburn was instantly forgotten as he grabbed the back of his head and more tubes and bottles clattered to the counter top and rolled and bounced to the floor. Still gripping the back of his head, he staggered toward the toilet, kicking the pill bottles out of his way. He plopped down on the seat and fingered his scalp carefully. Damn that hurt! But there was no blood on his fingers when he pulled them away.

He swore one more time for good measure and looked around for the bottle of antacids he had been holding a second ago.

There was a quiet knock at the door.

Shit! Chris! Of course he had heard the commotion. Man had ears like a bat. He was radar personified when it came to hearing things that no one wanted him to know.

"J.D.?" the voice asked.

"Er--" J.D. hesitated. He let go of his head and reached over to open the door.

"Didn't mean to wake you," J.D. said, as the door swung open.

"You didn't wake me," Chris replied, standing in the doorway.

No, of course not, thought J.D., eyeing Chris's wet hair, the tee shirt that was soggily plastered against his chest, the long shorts, the running shoes and the headphones around his neck. It's 4:45 AM. Why would anyone be sleeping when they could be out running in the ice cold rain?

"Nice run?" J.D. asked casually.

Chris nodded. He eyed the bottles on the floor and one corner of his mouth twitched. "You find what you were looking for?"

"Yeah." J.D. shrugged coolly. No problem.

"Came to tell you it's raining pretty hard. You probably want to put off that ride."

"Thanks," J.D. said.

Chris pursed his lips.

J.D. waited. Waited standing amid a half dozen bottles and tubes from the medicine cabinet. Waited while hydrochloric acid from his stomach burned a hole through his chest. Waited, thinking about that nice, soft bed just over twenty feet away, and the little bit of sleep he could still get.

"Was there something else?" J.D. asked, trying to hide the edge of frustration in his voice.

"Since you're up," Chris said. "I could use some help with a project."

The prospect of another hour of sleep evaporated in a puff of smoke. Or perhaps it was the soft hiss of air between J.D.'s teeth.

"Um, sure, Chris," J.D. replied. What else did he have to do anyway? Had he been home, he and Buck might have sat down to laugh their way through a couple hours worth of Saturday morning cartoons. But that was Buck. And watching cartoons while Chris worked away at some project was way, way, _way_ out of the question. And frankly, J.D. wasn't sure he wanted his boss to know that he still liked cartoons. Assuming that wasn't one of those secrets that Chris somehow already knew.

J.D. brightened suddenly, realizing that Chris Larabee had just asked for his help on a project. That didn't happen every day.

He leaned around the doorway and called after Chris, who was already on his way upstairs. "When do you want to start?" he asked.

Chris turned back. "No rush," he said. "We'll have breakfast first."

J.D. groaned and looked around for the fallen bottle of antacids.

By the time J.D. showered, shaved, dressed, and made his way to the kitchen, Chris was already seated at the table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper and an empty plate on the placemat in front of him.

Eggs were in the frying pan, and bacon was on a plate on the stove. Even better, coffee was in the coffee pot. And it was hot, strong, and fresh. Forgetting all about his discomfort of four A.M., J.D. piled up a plate and poured a big mug of coffee. He tucked a placemat under his arm and carried it all to the table.

He plowed through the eggs. Still chewing his bacon, he reached for the discarded sports section.

"So, what's up?" J.D. asked casually, skimming through the first page.

"What?" Chris asked absently, never lifting his eyes from the paper.

"The project you wanted help with?" J.D. clarified patiently, very patiently.

Chris lowered the paper to the table, still reading. J.D. craned his neck to try to see what Chris was reading that had sucked up all his attention. He didn't have much chance, as Chris looked up at that moment.

"I need to overhaul the engine on the Cushman," Chris said, sounding ever so slightly resigned, as he spoke of the small utility vehicle that had seemed to have acquired a stubborn streak lately, along with a string of broken belts and leaky hoses. J.D. grinned. He could help overhaul the Cushman. After all, he knew his motorcycle inside and out. And he had recently helped Buck overhaul the engine on his beloved antique truck. Buck loved to overhaul the engine on his beloved truck, J.D. thought. Buck never sounded resigned about an engine overhaul. In fact, he always sounded like it was an event he had looked forward to for months.

"Sure, Chris," J.D. answered quickly. "I can help with that. I've got lots of experience, too. In fact--"

He was interrupted.

"It's not that big a job, J.D." Chris explained, now sounding ever so slightly exasperated. "I need _you_ to take a look at the computer in the den."

The computer, he had said. Five days a week, the team depended on him to work practical miracles on their computers. They made fun of him on the occasions when he did have to give in and call IT. On the sixth and seventh days, he was supposed to have fun. Granted, poking around on computers generally WAS fun. But that wasn't the point here, was it? He would just remind Chris that he was off duty and that Chris's personal computer wasn't really his responsibility.

He was set to do just that. But it was too late. His mouth was already asking what was wrong with it.

"Running slow," Chris replied. "Probably needs someone to take off the spyware."

J.D. sighed. That figured. Positively paranoid about security, surveillance, and proper protection on an operation, but so like the man to leave his home computer, gateway to the information highway, portal for personal business, practically unprotected.

J.D. all but groaned. "When's the last time you ran a utility to do that?" he asked.

Chris smirked at him, as if J.D. were the idiot who had let spyware take over his machine. Mockingly, he appeared to take a second to think about that before simply replying "Never."

This time J.D. did groan. He closed his eyes, too. "At least tell me you have a firewall and virus protection."

Chris made a sour face. "I'm not stupid, J.D." he said through his teeth.

And J.D. felt his face grow hot. "I didn't mean..." he started but didn't finish because a niggling little voice in the back of his head wondered loudly whether not running any kind of utility to block or remove spyware couldn't really be classified under the heading of stupid.

Boy, he thought blackly, if the shoe were on the other foot, he'd be mocked half to death for not protecting his computer. But he didn't dare say so. Instead he made a minor show of giving in with great reluctance, assuring Chris with a large sigh that he could take care of that for him.

And irritatingly, Chris Larabee appeared not to notice his reluctance at all.

"Thanks," the man said. "I left the passwords on the desk." And with that, he rose up from the table, put his dishes in the sink, and left, leaving J.D. alone in the kitchen. He glowered at the hallway. It took him another second to realize that Chris had never even bothered to consider that J.D. might have said no.

"Of all the..." he muttered, then sighed. "Who am I kidding?" he asked the air.

He shook his head at himself, feeling ever so slightly used and disgruntled and picked up what was left of the paper. Sure, he said he'd clean off Chris's computer. But he didn't say he'd do it right away. And he almost felt like giving the empty kitchen a resounding "So there!" just to prove the point.

Half the morning had sped by while J.D. was in the den that served as Chris's office. Nice office that, when you really looked around. Dark brown leather sofa (No Mountain Dew stain. J.D. had checked.), barrister bookcases with beveled glass, brick fireplace, the big wooden desk, of course, and the old TV that used to be in the living room. J.D. spun the swivel desk chair in a circle while he waited, waited, and waited some more. It shouldn't have taken this long really. But then, he hadn't counted on how much software and how many updates he'd have to download.

As he rebooted into Safe Mode, he consulted a list of suspect files he had scribbled on a pad of paper. He'd had to go back to the kitchen to find both paper and pencil because Larabee kept his desk locked up tighter than the weapons locker at the training range. Tighter than the fine print on J.D.'s motorcycle loan. Tighter than... The computer grabbed his attention, and he stopped spinning the desk chair around looking for just the right metaphor to tell Buck later. He put down the list.

Safe mode. He grinned and cracked his knuckles. There was nowhere the little spying buggers could hide from him now. And he set about hunting them down one by one, adding an occasional laser shooting and explosion noise just for emphasis.

"Got you!" he roared suddenly in triumph, thrusting both hands into the air. "Dead. Dead. You are so dead. Take that you little lying, cheating, spyware bastard!" He pointed his finger at the screen. "Slink back to whatever hole you crawled out of and tell your master you failed!" He was feeling pretty damn proud of himself as he restarted the computer one last time.

His eyes drifted along the mantel above the fireplace. It was made from a thick beam of wood and it wrapped around the bricks on three sides. He'd never paid much attention to the room. He knew there was gun safe or at least a lockbox in here somewhere. Presumably it was behind the wooden door that was half hidden in the shadow between a tall bookcase and the jut of the hearth. He had always assumed that was another closet. But it occurred to him that he had never actually seen that door open.

But he was alone now. And the computer was still rebooting. So technically, he had nothing to do. And try as he might, he couldn't recall Chris ever saying that any place in the house was off limits.

His feet carried him over to the closet door. He tested the knob and the cool metal turned obligingly in his hand. Chris would have locked the door, he reasoned with himself, if the closet were off limits. And the door wasn't locked. So he opened it.

A white string hung down in front of him. He pulled it and a light blazed up from a bare bulb screwed into a socket above his head.

Yup, it was a closet. Big enough for a grown man to hide in if it weren't so full of crap. Well, not crap exactly, or not that J.D. could actually tell. It was practically stuffed with boxes--right up to the fat wooden dowel for hanging coats. And most definitely not off limits. Four boxes marked "Buck" were visible right in front of him.

He wondered what Buck would store here that he wouldn't put into storage at the townhouse. So far as he could tell, Buck had a LOT of stuff stored at the townhouse. So how much crap could one man possibly have? He scanned up the boxes, stacked one on top of each other, the top one stuffed so full that something was actually sticking out of the top. J.D. peered at it. It didn't take much closer inspection to discover a pair of snowshoes he recognized. And they definitely did not belong to Buck.

His eyes narrowed. Those were HIS snowshoes. New last winter. He remembered loaning them to Buck--against his better judgment no less--sometime last February. Well he sure wasn't going to sit around and wait for Buck to remember he had packed them into a box and shoved them into one of Chris's closets somewhere.

"They better not be scratched," he growled, reaching upward and grabbing the lightweight metal. "Or bent," he added, giving a tug. It seemed caught on something. "Or rusty," he snarled, giving it one more good tug. Stuck.

He eyed the boxes one more time. Looked like he was going to have to lift the whole box down, so he could reach in and unhook the snowshoes.

The four boxes were piled snugly into the space available, fitting neatly into the space below the top shelf of the closet that overhung the hanging bar. In fact, the back part of the box, the part J.D. couldn't reach in the small, crowded space, was jammed up against the shelf.

J.D. was not to be deterred. If it went in, he reasoned, it can come out, too. And he set to alternately, rocking, and tugging, pulling, and lifting until slowly, bit by bit, the box began to come free. Rock, tug, pull, slide. Rock, tug, pull, slide. Rock, tug, pull--until at last one long, hard tug brought the box sliding free, falling right down into J.D.'s arms.

It turned out to be heavier than he expected, as it thunked hard against his chest. He staggered under its weight, shuffling his feet for better purchase in the small space, grunting as the box in front of him knocked hard on the hanging bar, causing his shoulder to bang just as hard on the door jamb behind him.

In the middle of the second swear word, he noticed a small white box, now precariously balanced atop a short stack of small, uneven boxes on the top shelf of the closet. And as he watched in horror, hands too full of Buck's big, heavy box of crap to do anything about it, the box slid slowly forward, hit the edge of the box right below it and tumbled end over end, down the tower of boxes marked "Buck", to thud hard on his sock-covered toes before hitting the floor with a surprisingly loud crunch

"Ow!" and "Shit!" followed by a litany of half intelligible curses spewed from J.D.'s mouth as he crumpled forward, remembering just in time not to set Buck's stupid box down onto his other foot.

"Shit, shit!" he repeated as he felt his toes inside the sock. He wriggled them and inspected his sock at close range, relieved to see there was no blood. He plumped himself down against the closet door and pulled off his sock, and squinted at his foot, wriggling his toes again just to make sure nothing was broken. God damn that hurt, he muttered, massaging the injured digits. His eye fell on the flat, white box. It sure was heavier than it looked.

Curiosity got the better of him.

He reached for the box, picking it up and hefting its weight experimentally, his ears picking up the unmistakable sound of small objects sliding around inside it and then hitting each other with a distinctive clink.

He tilted the box the other way just to make sure. Slide and clink. And then he tilted it back, with no better result. Whatever it was, he realized slowly, it sounded like it was broken now.

Damn. He listened a minute to the silence of the house and convinced himself that he was still alone. He set the box back on the floor, heart pounding, and sliced his thumbnail through the Scotch tape holding the box closed, and pulled off the cover.

Double damn.

Whatever it been at one time, it was now a jumble of black and white ceramic pieces of varying sizes. He stared into the box, willing time to reverse itself, aware that that was not going to happen, and berating himself.

In a flash of hopeful optimism he checked the box for some sort of label, something to tell him what it was, or even better, that it belonged to Buck. No such luck.

In fact, the word "Larabee" glared up at him in tiny black writing from one shiny, jagged, white piece.

He was so dead. So totally and completely dead.

The only question was how painfully he was going to die. J.D. was pretty sure that depended on what it was he had broken.

He reached for one of the bigger pieces, but was stopped by the realization that he didn't want to get caught sitting here in the closet doorway beside a box marked with someone else's name, inspecting the broken pieces of something that was most definitely none of his business. So he did what he deemed a good half of his teammates would have done. He put the cover back on the box, got back to his feet, stepping gingerly on his throbbing toes, removed his snowshoes from Buck's box, and put the box right back up on the stack where it came from, closing the closet door behind him. Then he scooped up the flat white box and its broken contents and limped hastily to the guest bedroom.

Sitting on the bed, he carefully pulled aside the tissue paper to reveal the pieces. Black and white ceramic, with some handwriting, that he hoped to God wasn't some authentic, one-of-a-kind artist's signature, or worse, he reflected, his mouth going dry--some childhood creation from Adam, Chris's beloved son who never got to grow up.

On closer inspection, that possibility seemed unlikely. As far as he could make out, after starting to separate and reorient the pieces, he was looking at the pieces of some kind of large ceramic tile. There was a picture on it, drawn in black and white. There were words, neatly handwritten it appeared, and a bunch of people's names that J.D. guessed had also been handwritten. Guessing the tile would be roughly the same size as the box, he began to try to reassemble the pieces inside the box cover, like a jigsaw puzzle, gratified as the black lines began to take shape before him.

It didn't take him long to put together a reasonable estimate of what the tile must have looked like. He stared at it a long time, more relieved than he could say that it did not bear the remotest resemblance to the kind of pre-school crafts that J.D.'s own mother had cherished from her only son. Nowhere did it have Adam's name on it. And although J.D. had not known Sarah, Larabee's dead wife, he was pretty sure the sarcasm and bawdy humor evident in the drawing had not come from her.

He sat on the bed and stared at the picture that had started to take shape in the center of the box. It was a large doghouse, hand-drawn, cartoon style in black and white. It had a peaked roof, or would as soon as J.D. found all the pieces. A heavy, hand drawn chain ran across three different pieces to disappear into the deep, dark depths of the yawning, cave-like doorway, from the center of which, on a single fragment of tile, a pair of threatening eyes shone white against the black. Above the door was a crooked sign with a bite taken out of it and three of what J.D. guessed to be bullet holes in it. The sign said Lead Dog. The rest of the doghouse, he noted, was thoroughly graffiti'd over with what looked like names or at least nicknames. Laying down another jagged piece of ceramic, he peered closer at the pieces and made out Mad Dog, Bad Dog, Top Dog and two pieces that seemed to go together to read Deputy Dog.

Turning pieces over one by one, he began to realize that the drawing was surrounded by small signatures and phrases printed around the drawing. Messages beginning "To Chris" or "Chris" or even just "Larabee". Fragments of messages where J.D. could make out words like "Good luck," at least one "Godspeed" and "never forget". A strange shiver ran up his spine to realize what he was reading: messages to Chris out of a past that to J.D., when he thought about it, seemed liked a whole other lifetime, or like something Buck Wilmington had made up. But here was proof in black and white. Well wishes from a bunch of young and rowdy Navy SEALs.

J.D. put the pieces in his hand back into the box, feeling suddenly awkward, like an intruder. And worse than that, he realized his monumental stupidity, as for the first time, it truly came home to him that there had been another team, before ATF Team Seven, as dedicated, as tight, maybe even more so--and Chris had left them.

The back door slammed, and he jerked upright.

Thankfully, J.D. Dunne had always been fast on his feet--both mentally and physically. He closed the box hurriedly, and shoved it inside his duffel bag. It was a tight squeeze there on top of his clothes, and he cringed to see the tell-tale corners visible beneath the taut fabric. Digging his hand around under the box, he pulled out some wadded up socks and a pair of sweats. He shoved the box further down into the bag, padded it with the socks and sweatpants. Better. He remembered the snowshoes an instant later.

"J.D.?" Chris called.

J.D. reckoned he had left the mud room and had already poked his head into the den to see that he was not there. The next stop would be the guest room. Satisfied at the way the odd shape of the snowshoes shoved in at the top pulled the fabric of his duffel bag tight, outlining their odd features and totally obscuring the unnaturally square object at the bottom of the bag, J.D. nevertheless used his uninjured foot to slide the bag away from the door and to the foot of the bed, where it then half buried itself in the quilt drooping off the end of the bed. He opened the door just as Chris was about to knock.

"Hey," J.D. greeted him, and congratulated himself on his casual tone. And on the way he didn't even break a sweat when Chris squinted at him slightly.

Whatever it was he had on his mind, he didn't say. The slight frown vanished, as he asked instead, "You done already?"

He sounded surprised--and pleased.

"Sure," J.D. shrugged nonchalantly, disinterestedly.

"Great," Chris replied. "Let's have a look."

With that he wheeled and headed for the den, and J.D. was suddenly seized with the absurd notion that he had left the closet door open, or some small piece of tile still lying on the floor. He was right on Chris's heels as he wandered over to the computer. And had the nerve to look at it sitting there, running smoothly as you please, with a vague disinterest that J.D. tried not to let bother him.

Chris looked up. "Thanks," he said, with a grin. And heck if the man didn't actually look pleased.

"No big deal, really," J.D. replied, certain now that there were no stray pieces lying on the hardwood floor but still considering how best to get Chris out of the room before he somehow figured out that something was not right.

That wouldn't be that hard either, now that he thought about it.

J.D. stepped up to the computer. "All I had to do," he explained, "was run updates on Spybot and AdAware. 'Course HijackThis was really helpful. But after I ran it all in safe mode, I was finally able to get rid of TVMedia and WildTangent. It was tricky, though." He paused, inhaled and started phase II of his explanation. "So first I had to..."

That was far enough.

"You hungry?" the team leader interrupted, predictably. Chris was never all that interested in the technical details.

J.D. shrugged again. "I could eat."

Chris gave a snort, as if he found J.D.'s reply amusing. But he turned and headed for the kitchen.

J.D. resisted the urge to protest that snort, and also the urge to look backward at the closet, lest Chris exercise some sort of clairvoyance or x-ray vision, or something. Hell, the things the man figured out were just plain spooky sometimes. But J.D. couldn't afford to risk it. He followed Chris, without a backward glance, away from the scene of the crime.

Chris piled waxed-paper packages of cold cuts on the counter, while J.D. pulled out the bread.

"Stopped raining," Chris said, sliding assorted condiments onto the counter.

J.D. gave him a sidelong glance, trying to fathom the direction of this conversation and starting to feel like it was some sort of a test. As usual, he failed it.

"You were going for a ride," Chris prodded.

"Oh, right!" He had completely forgotten. And from the look on Chris's face, the man had already figured that out.

The "At least your horse will get some exercise." that followed was so quiet, J.D. almost didn't hear it. He glowered at Larabee's back and considered reminding him that he _might_ have considered running with the man this morning, _had_ he been asked or that it was _Chris's_ little computer issue that kept him tied up all morning, but he didn't. He didn't because somehow, _somehow_ Chris would know the computer didn't take all morning and that would lead to the question of how else J.D. had spent the morning, which would lead to the issue of the box, the box whose contents he had broken, and now hidden in his duffel bag and shoved partially under his bed. And J.D. definitely didn't want to go there. Because, damn Chris, too many questions and the truth started dribbling right out of J.D., whether he wanted it to or not.

So he decided to let Chris just have his little joke and leave it at that. Of course, by the time he decided that, Chris had already taken his plate through the living room and out the screen door onto the side deck, where he seated himself in one of the two Adirondack chairs, propped his feet up on the railing, and, drink in hand, surveyed the west pasture intently.

J.D. followed suit only to realize belatedly that his chair was too far from the railing for his feet to reach. That, of course was because J.D. was the shortest person on the whole team. No doubt, too, Buck Wilmington and his six foot four inch self was the last person to sit in this chair. Scowling, and balancing his lunch in both hands, J.D. scooted the chair forward until he could put his feet up, too. He surveyed the pasture briefly, but had no idea what Chris was looking at, so he dug into his sandwich instead.

"So," J.D. inquired after a long silence. "You finished fixing the Cushman?"

That brought forth a snort and a grimace that J.D. took for "no."

"I could help," he offered.

Chris flicked a glance toward him as if considering, then shook his head. "Nah," he said. "Go take your ride."

"You sure?" J.D. asked. "I mean, I've worked on Buck's truck, some."

Chris appeared to mull that over for a fraction of a second before repeating his original reply, adding on, "You've done enough work for me today."

J.D. supposed that was actually a compliment. Nevertheless he added, "I overhauled my bike a couple months ago. Did a complete..."

"J.D.," Chris said through his teeth.

It looked like J.D. was going for that ride.

He wasn't sure how much good exercise his horse actually got. He spent most of the ride thinking about the pieces of the tile. Well, not the tile exactly, so much. Just something about it kept wiggling around and poking him uncomfortably in the back of the brain.

When he thought about it, he actually knew very little about Chris and Buck's time in the SEALs. He knew they joined together, made it through a hellish training program to finally be accepted into the elite brotherhood of the SEALs, and in the end, somehow found their way to the same team, and eventually, the same squad. What else J.D. knew came largely from the stories Buck liked to tell, most of which were exuberantly-related, self-serving yarns about off-duty adventures, full of plenty of hot air that J.D. was sure were at least partly fabricated from Buck's fertile imagination and stuff that he couldn't remember correctly. J.D. couldn't say that for certain, though, since Chris rarely deigned to either add to or contradict Buck's stories. Occasionally he left the room. Mostly, though, Chris just sat there silently, smiling one of his sly, secret smiles into the bottom of his whiskey glass.

Any other stories Buck told involving any actual, theoretical, or hypothetical operations hypothetically, theoretically, or actually conducted during his time in special operations generally suffered from large gaps in the narrative often prefaced with one of Buck's favorite stock phrases: "That part's still classified. I'd like to tell ya. But I'd sure hate to have to kill ya."

Conspicuously, Buck never named names. And Chris never said anything about those days at all.

All of which didn't tell J.D. very much other than Buck had clearly enjoyed the hell out of being a U.S. Navy SEAL.

But still he left.

A person had to wonder at that. Why does a man who loves a career and a lifestyle as much as Buck loved his time in the SEALs one day decide to up and leave it?

All the answer Buck ever gave to that question was a self satisfied grin accompanied by the words "I just followed Chris." Which wasn't much of an answer--or much of a reason--if you asked J.D.

Once, early on in his time with ATF Team Seven, J.D. had tried to ask Chris why he had left the SEALs. To his knowledge, it was one of a very few times J.D. had ever seen Chris Larabee at a loss for words. Stonewalling, sure. Ignoring a question he didn't want to answer, absolutely. Measuring his words before speaking, often. Simply having nothing to say, a great deal of the time. But this was actually perplexed. Chris had narrowed his eyes as if really thinking about it.

Only Chris never answered the question. He hadn't uttered a single, solitary syllable before Buck was suddenly there, steering J.D. away, distracting him, dragging him off in some other direction. And somehow, though nothing was said, J.D. got the distinct message that the subject was to be considered closed.

He didn't ask again.

All that contemplation got J.D. and his horse as far as the fence marking the eastern boundary line of Chris's property, where his confused horse gave a toss of its head. Receiving no further instructions from his rider, the gelding made the decision to turn around and head back toward the barn.

A half hour later, J.D. was slightly surprised to find himself back at the barn with no new answers and no new information to go with his new questions. He was not sure at what point he had resolved to take the tile home with him, but he did not bother to remind himself of the many reasons why taking something of a personal nature from his boss's home was a bad idea. He didn't even bother to justify it by reminding himself that he planned to bring it back again and that the odds of Chris suddenly feeling the need to find that particular item buried in the back of that particular closet were ridiculously low. And he surely didn't try to convince himself to come clean and just admit that he broke the damn tile--even when he could blame part of it on Buck not returning the snowshoes.

Unfortunately, good sense and rationalizations alike fell by the wayside, done in by curiosity and the fact that at some point as the horse followed the path it had chosen to the fence and back, J.D. remembered that he had seen that doghouse design once before--on another white tile, somewhere in the town house that he now shared with Buck. And he was willing to bet that it was still in that house somewhere. He only had to get home before Buck to start looking.

He phoned the exterminator from the front porch before removing his boots and going inside. With any luck, the guy would call him back when he took a break from massacring roaches and got around to checking his messages. Unfortunately, there was no way to know when that might be.

When one is about to smuggle an item of a personal nature from one's boss's house, it is a good idea to make sure that said boss remains unaware of the nature of the crime about to be committed against him. Since the box was now in J.D.'s bag under the bed in the guest room, J.D. only needed to keep Chris away from the guest room and to guard against the infinitesimal possibility that Chris would go looking in the office closet and notice the missing box. The best way to do that, J.D. decided, would be to follow Machiavelli's advice and keep his friends close and his enemies closer. Chris, seeming to qualify in both instances under the circumstances.

So, once J.D. ascertained that Chris was not in the house or in the garage fiddling with his tools, the young agent grabbed a couple of bottles of cold water from the fridge and went out to the tool shed, where Chris's legs, clad in a pair of grass- and grease-stained jeans protruded from under the old utility vehicle. The legs were surrounded by a variety of pieces, parts, chemicals, tools, and shop rags. The vehicle had been raised up on blocks and wedged in tightly to keep it from rolling off and possibly crushing whatever was underneath it, which, based on the muffled muttering and swearing was all the rest of Chris.

J.D. stood in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot and considering how he could let Chris know he was there without startling him. Not least because with J.D.'s luck the man would probably knock himself out cold on the undercarriage of the battered old Cushman and then J.D. would have to call the ambulance. Two possibly. One for Chris and one in case Chris woke up and decided to kill him.

He didn't have to consider long, as Chris picked that moment to slide himself out from under the machine, wiping his hands on an old hand towel. He looked up at J.D. and frowned.

"You need something J.D.?" he asked, exasperation evident in his tone.

J.D. held out one of the water bottles. "Came to see if you needed help," J.D. said kindly.

Chris's answer was a glare at the old machine, which stood on its blocks stubbornly impervious.

"What I need," Chris snarled, getting up and reaching for one of the waters, "is for Buck to stop driving over big ass rocks. It's not a goddamn race car for Christ's sake."

Since Buck was not here, Chris glowered at J.D.

J.D.'s own water halted halfway to his mouth, as words leapt to his lips. "Maybe Buck didn't see the rock..." he said, defending his friend, even if he was a big careless idiot, who didn't return the stuff he borrowed.

Chris didn't want to hear it, apparently. He cut J.D. off before he could list another reason why Buck might be excused.

"Buck ran over a big rock," Chris said irritably, throwing down his towel and expelling a long breath. "But it ain't his fault the thing's twelve years old and well past its prime. I can rebuild it or I can replace it and that's about it."

Chris grunted something that J.D. presumed was a thank you for the water and brushed disgustedly past J.D. and left the young agent, still staring at the battered little cart, and morosely contemplating the idea that now Chris Larabee was also ticked off. Not by J.D., thankfully, but nevertheless the evening forecast was looking decidedly frosty and uncomfortable. And the exterminator still had not called to say when J.D. could get back into his house. It occurred to J.D. that Buck was at least partly responsible for this, too. And the man wasn't even here.

He went back in the front door, put his water bottle back in the fridge and pulled out a beer instead, reflecting that Chris Larabee and Buck Wilmington could drive a man to drink. He went into the living room and turned on the TV, circumventing the empty recliner and seating himself instead on the same center sofa cushion as before. He checked his messages--still no exterminator--and began flipping through the channels, a black cloud of disgust still hanging above his head.

He had just decided on a nice rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond, when Chris appeared, dressed in clean clothes, and a beer in hand. "Anything good on?" he asked, sliding into his recliner. His tone was still terse.

J.D. wondered for a moment whether Chris's question was a real question or just a snide commentary on J.D.'s choice of programs. Uncertain, he searched for a suitable reply.

A full three seconds went by before he realized, again stupidly, that Chris wasn't looking for an explanation. Or any sort of reply at all, really. Apparently, that was Chris Larabee's notion of small talk. Someone ought to explain to the man what the word conversation actually meant.

But not right now, J.D. amended silently. The less conversation he had with Chris Larabee, the less likely he was to let Chris lull him into some sort of ignorant ease and lead him to mention something he shouldn't and somehow accidentally--and stupidly--reveal exactly what he was trying to hide. A paranoid idea, perhaps. Or maybe not so much, considering that Chris had done it before. Granted this wasn't the same situation. Chris didn't actually have any good reason to suspect that J.D. had done anything he shouldn't have. Not like that time when Buck hijacked Chris's precious Ram out of the federal parking garage so he could pick up...

Best not to think about that, he decided. He had held up approximately 1 minute and 28 seconds under interrogation, done in by the famously terrifying Larabee glare. Even Buck had been disgusted when he found out how completely J.D. had ratted him out.

J.D. doubted that Chris was terribly interested in the program he chose, but at least the man was now looking at the TV screen instead of at J.D. So J.D. settled himself a little more deeply into his sofa cushion. And looked relaxed. And willed himself not to be uncomfortable with the silence, noting with no little irony that Chris had had far more to say when he thought he was all alone under the Cushman than when he was sitting in the living room with J.D. Dunne.

Unfortunately, J.D. was not all that comfortable with silence. And now he had to wonder. Was Chris Larabee's silence the usual silence from a man who Vin Tanner said only spoke three words a day? Or was it more the Chris Larabee thinking kind of silence? And if he was thinking, was he thinking about normal stuff, like the ranch, or the horses, or the Cushman, or the operations the team currently had running, or the paperwork, or whether the Ram needed an oil change-- or was he thinking about why J.D. Dunne was acting so weird.

He wasn't acting weird, was he? He was doing his best not to act weird. Or was that his mistake? Was Chris wondering why he was trying so hard not to act so weird?

Then the front door opened. This was not an unusual occurrence at Chris Larabee's ranch.

"Hey!" a familiar voice hollered down the front hall. "Y'all here?"

"Hey!" Chris returned casually, without so much as glancing away from the TV.

A second later, Vin Tanner strode into J.D.'s view from the couch. And J.D. thought he had never been so happy to see someone in his entire life.

"Hey, J.D.!" Tanner greeted him exuberantly. J.D. held up a hand casually to be slapped five. Then he added "I forgot you were here."

J.D. snorted. Didn't that just figure?

Nevertheless he returned a friendly "Hey, Vin," glad that both he and Chris now had someone else to distract them.

Tanner plopped himself into an open space on the couch between J.D. and Chris's recliner. "What's on TV?" he asked, reaching a hand out for Chris's beer.

Larabee's eyes never left the screen, but his hand snagged the beer bottle right out of Vin's fingertips. "Get your own," he growled, placing the bottle well out of Vin's reach.

Vin laughed easily and leaned back. Never let it be said, J.D. Dunne fell for a trick more than once. He moved his bottle out away from the snack-stealing sharpshooter and kept watching the TV.

"Damn, Larabee," Vin laughed, climbing out of the deep, comfortable cushion and heading for the kitchen. "He sticks around here any longer and he's gonna pick up the rest of yer pleasant personality."

Chris's lips twitched slightly upward, which was all the appreciation Vin's sparkling wit was likely to get.

And J.D. wondered why he felt so good about that comment.

Tanner was back a moment later with a long-neck of his own. This time he demanded J.D. shift his butt over and make room.

J.D. gave him a grunt of annoyance as if to say "I was here first." But he knew he'd lose the argument, so he shoved over, and Vin plopped himself right back in that spot next to Chris.

Vin wasted no time grabbing the controller and flipping on a football game that interested no one but himself.

J.D. found it much more interesting to watch Vin, who was clearly itching to put his booted feet up on that wooden coffee table, and just as clearly wasn't willing to risk it with Chris sitting right there. The sniper cast a surreptitious sideways glance over at Chris, who had a recliner so he wouldn't have to put his feet up on the coffee table. Vin toed off his boots. And Chris smirked knowingly, without ever looking away from the screen, as a pair of stocking feet slid silently onto the table top. All three men stayed that way, more or less silent, just staring at the TV, beers slowly disappearing.

J.D. was not aware that his knee was jiggling, until he realized that both Vin and Chris were looking at him.

"Small, local earthquake?" Vin asked, raising an eyebrow in J.D.'s direction.

"Sorry," J.D. replied.

Several more minutes went by.

The other knee betrayed him.

"You nervous about something?" Vin asked.

J.D. nearly choked on his beer.

Chris's lips twitched again, amusement glinting from green hazel eyes.

Vin turned back to Chris, who only shrugged as if to say "You figure him out."

Vin gave a quiet grunt, and leaned back against the cushions.

Another minute ticked by. The game droned on.

"You know," the sharpshooter drawled into a commercial space. "A good early mornin' run c'n help you work off all that nervous energy."

J.D. turned to stare at him.

"Sleep better, too," the sharpshooter added innocently. "Calm your nerves."

"Keep you in shape," came the comment from Chris, so low J.D. almost missed it.

Vin hid his grin behind his beer.

J.D. glared at both of them. "I am in great shape!" he announced rather more sharply than he intended. "I sleep just fine. And I am not nervous."

Chris snorted.

J.D. felt his ears burn as he thought back to standing in the midst of the contents of the downstairs medicine cabinet in the wee, gray hours that morning.

The exterminator didn't call until late that afternoon. He cheerfully related that the bug problem was much less advanced in their unit than in the apartment across the hall. He just as cheerfully recommended that J.D. spend another night away from his gas-bombed pad. It should be all clear to come back in the morning.

Damn. That wouldn't give him too much time before Buck ambled in. Knowing Buck, as J.D. did, the man would probably have a big lazy smile plastered all across his face. He'd look at J.D. with the kind of self-satisfaction usually reserved for someone who had done something important or useful, like saving the world or at least a small, helpless kitten. Then, ignoring the pile up of dead bug bodies and anything else that might need to be cleaned or straightened up, Buck would head right up to his room for a long, self-satisfied nap. Said long nap in his room would prevent J.D. from searching there, the very place where that other tile was most likely to be squirreled away. That and storage. But getting into storage and then searching through all the boxes there was going to take a long time.

Maybe there was some way he could get Buck to dally a little longer with his stewardess. That seemed a good, plan, he reflected. And shouldn't be all that hard to carry out, if he could think of some plausible way to do it.

Pacing the hallway behind the couch, he pressed the exterminator for more details, pressing a finger to his other ear to block out the voices. Voices. Arguing. Discussing. Debating. Ridiculing each other. Two freakin' days he'd been here, during which time Chris Larabee had hardly spoken two civil sentences. Vin Tanner had been here two hours and he and Chris were jabbering like, well, like Chris and Buck.

"Dammit, I can't hear!" He froze like a deer in headlights to hear the words come out of his mouth. He thought for a second Chris might get up out of the recliner just long enough to pick him up and heave him out the front door.

Instead, Vin and Chris shared a look that was far too amused for J.D.'s taste. He pretended not to notice and tried instead to listen to the exterminator's answer to his last question. It was hard, though, because Vin kept talking. Only now he was talking about J.D. Which made it very hard to pay much attention to specifications from Materials Safety Data Sheets about the kinds of chemicals used to kill roaches.

"Jesus, Larabee," Vin said loudly. "Kid's twitchy _and_ grouchy. What'd you do to him?"

Chris scowled back at him. "Hell if I know. I've been under that damn Cushman all day." He glowered over in J.D.'s direction and muttered none too quietly, "He was twitchy when he got here."

J.D. would have liked to protest that statement, but the exterminator was now asking him something. He pressed the finger harder to his opposite ear, and moved a little farther into the hallway to ask the man to repeat what he just said.

"Why don't you just shoot the damn thing?" Vin suggested, shaking his head.

Four feet farther down the hall, J.D. assumed Vin was still talking about the Cushman. "Want me to take a look at it? Got some experience with motor vehicle repairs."

Chris seemed to think about that.

"Got tools in my truck," Vin added.

Chris shrugged. "Couldn't hurt," he said finally.

"Besides," Vin added nice and loudly, "looks like J.D. wants us to shut up."

J.D.'s head whipped around at that, mortified. Mostly because, as usual, Vin had hit the target dead center, though if pressed, J.D. would have gone to his grave swearing that it was only Vin he wanted to shut up. You don't tell Chris Larabee to shut up. At least J.D. didn't. Sane people didn't. Buck, maybe, could get away with it. But sure as hell, not J.D.

"I'm sorry...what?" he asked the exterminator, who by now was getting just a little bit irritated himself.

Both other men laughed. They climbed to their feet, and went out the front door just like that leaving the TV droning on in the background.

Well, that just figured, he thought sourly, as he hung up the phone and looked around at the empty living room. J.D.'s help had been refused. Flat out. But Vin's was apparently acceptable.

It seemed unfair. After all, even Buck trusted J.D.'s help and God knew how obsessive he was about his little red vintage truck, the one he restored with his own two hands, his little cherry red hellcat. You'd think the truck was actually his girlfriend, they way he talked about her.

And Vin? Well, J.D. was reasonably certain that Chris had actually seen Vin's handiwork, right? After all Tanner's beat up, busted, dilapidated, run-down, battered, piece of crap Jeep was parked right in the driveway for all to see.

J.D. reminded himself pointedly that his goal here was not to spend the afternoon fixing the Cushman. His goal was to get that broken whatever-it-was the hell out of the house without Chris knowing it. And, truth to tell, Vin Tanner could be just the distraction he needed.

In fact, Tanner proved to be far more distracting than J.D. would have suspected. He sat on the couch alone for a half hour and, stupidly, could think of nothing other than what Chris and Vin were doing out in the tool shed. He stole another glance at the door. He'd have thought they'd be back by now.

Chris had said the Cushman was pretty well beyond anything he could do with what he had available, right? And Chris ought to know. Chris knew a lot about machinery. Actually, when you actually stopped to pay attention, Chris knew a surprising lot about a lot of stuff.

Damn it was quiet.

Fifteen more minutes went by.

Before he even realized he'd made a decision, he was standing at the front door pulling on his sneakers.

The tool shed was empty, however. Oh, the Cushman was still there, up on blocks. But no Chris and no Vin.

Maybe they were in the barn.

They were not there either. But the horses had been fed.

Where did they go to next?

J.D. turned a complete circle looking around the yard. No one.

Perhaps they had gone around back.

That was when rational thought finally caught up with J.D. What the hell was he doing standing out on the lawn looking for two grown men, when he could be inside on that comfy sofa watching what HE wanted for a change.

He stumped back up the stairs and detoured through the kitchen for another Mountain Dew, tucking a box of Cheez-Its under his arm.

He startled as the garage door swung open.

Neither man coming in from the garage appeared to notice him at all. In fact, they reached right over and past him for another couple of beers and kept going--except Vin, who slowed his step only long enough to pluck the Cheez-Its right out from under J.D.'s arm, ignoring his protests completely and continuing on into the living room, both of them still animatedly discussing something involving a vice, a crankshaft, a hacksaw, some pipe and a lot of dangerous sounding power tools.

J.D. followed both of them, aiming to get the Cheez-Its back and to grab the controller. It was on the armrest of Chris Larabee's chair, where it was not even being used, as Chris's hands were full. Both his hands and his attention were occupied by a rag-wrapped piece of filthy metal that a second look revealed to be a crankshaft, one that was definitely bent. Chris and Vin were peering at it under the lamp, Chris turning it slowly left and slowly right, the two of them looking closely at something of evident importance under the lamplight.

J.D. eyed the controller and waited, still trying to figure out exactly what they were trying to see. Seemed to him that the big bend in the narrow end of the twisted club-shaped piece of metal was the problem. But, of course, no one asked him. So he kept watching for a chance to get the controller and grab his Cheez-Its back.

Running out of patience, he finally asked. "Can I have the controller?"

"The controller?" he repeated a little more loudly and a little less politely.

Heaving a long sigh, he leaned right over Vin and plucked the remote right off of Chris's armrest. The conversation stopped as both men looked up at J.D.

He ignored both of them and changed the channel.

Both men's heads swiveled vaguely toward the TV set.

A re-run of Home Improvement appeared on the screen, and J.D. let out a grin. Apparently he was the only one who seemed happy about that. But he had the controller, so according to house rules ala Buck Wilmington, his was the only opinion that counted. He settled back into his seat to watch.

A minute later, Vin said, "Couldn't hurt to look."

And without so much as glancing J.D.'s way, both men went back out to the kitchen. The garage door slammed. They were gone for another half hour.

He glowered at the TV. What the hell could two men who, popular convention held, didn't speak more than three words a day if it wasn't absolutely necessary, have been talking about all this time. And how the hell did they plan to repair a bent crankshaft? He refused to go out there and find out just what they were trying to do.

Whatcha doin', Chris? Like a five year old. He cringed at the thought of it.

And now he remembered the irritating thing about Chris and Vin. Chris's long silences were uncomfortable enough, whether the man meant them to be or not. But Vin and Chris together were worse than just Chris. And far worse than Chris and Buck--no matter what Ezra said. Unlike Chris and Vin, Buck didn't usually forget J.D. was still in the room.

He glowered at the TV and pretended not to notice when the two of them eventually came back inside.

"You hungry?" Vin asked.

He didn't have a chance to say either way, as Chris answered, "He's hungry," and moved off into the kitchen without even waiting for J.D. to agree.

Fat lot Chris knew, J.D. groused silently. He'd just eaten half that damn box of Cheez-Its. He was really going to have to do some kind of workout tomorrow. Vin turned the box of Cheez-Its over and poured some into his palm.

"What do you want, J.D.?" Chris called from the kitchen.

Oh sure, _now_ it mattered what he wanted.

"Whatever," J.D. replied.

Vin tossed a Cheez-It up in the air and caught it in his mouth.

"Let's order a pizza!" Vin answered, even though no one had asked him. He tried for two Cheez-Its, tossing them both into the air along the same trajectory, and catching them both flawlessly. He threw a wink at J.D.

"There's some of Josiah's chili," Chris called, his voice marginally muffled, leading J.D. to suspect that he had his head in the fridge or was already eating something.

"Pizza," Vin repeated, going for three this time. But the throw was not quite as neat, and he only managed to snag two. The third one bounced off his nose and onto Chris's recliner. He picked it up and blew on it before shoving it into his mouth.

"How about something marked 'Touch this and I'll rip your arms off'?" Chris hollered.

"That's mine!" Vin called back, as if Chris and J.D. hadn't actually figured that out. He tried the triple once again. This time he only snagged one. The other two flew off in different directions, skittering across the floor. One of them slid under the coffee table.

Vin snickered, reaching under the coffee table. His hand came back empty. He shrugged and stood up to wander into the kitchen to defend his week old leftovers, which he had no plans to eat tonight. J.D. rolled his eyes and closed up the Cheez-Its box. Three months from now, when Chris Larabee moved the coffee table, needing to obey some obsessive, anal-retentive compulsion to clean underneath of it, J.D. knew exactly who'd get blamed for that stray cracker.

"J.D.!" Chris's impatient shout nearly made him jump.

"Come pick your toppings," Vin yelled. "I'm starving!"

"I'm coming. I'm coming," J.D. complained, making his way into the kitchen. "Jesus! Keep your pants on."

Vin shoved a pizzeria take-out menu toward him with one hand, the other now full of some other snack item from the kitchen.

"And no broccoli," Tanner said sternly.

"Do I _look_ like Nathan?" J.D. snapped back.

Chris snickered at that, as he turned toward the phone, and J.D. suddenly felt inordinately proud of himself--despite the urge to look around and make sure the team's medic wasn't actually standing behind him.

Chris ordered the pizza, hung up the phone, and headed for the coat closet.

"Let's go, Tanner!" he said, jingling his car keys at the front door. It was not so much a request as an order.

"You want to come along, J.D.?" Chris asked, far more politely.

This time, he thought before he agreed. With Chris out of the house, he would have a chance to take another look in the box, and see if he could figure out how that tile fit together. He could see what else was drawn on the tile. He could figure out how best to try to repair the damage. He could take a closer look at those signatures and those messages.

"I think I'll stay here, thanks," he replied.

Tanner slid into his battered old leather jacket and followed Chris out the front door.

J.D. waited in the kitchen, drinking his soda until he heard the engine turn over on Larabee's big black truck. He waited while the headlights swung across the glass in the front door, casting reflections into the front hall. He waited until the car turned up the long driveway, heading for the pizzeria. Then he practically bolted for the guest room, shutting the door behind him and dragging the box out of his duffel bag.

He was thinking much more clearly now. In fact, he had come to the conclusion that it was highly unlikely that one fall off of one shelf had caused all that damage. Maybe none of it was his fault, he thought hopefully.

Pulling the lid off the box, a closer inspection revealed the truth to be better than he had feared but worse than he had hoped. Holding the pieces carefully up to the bulb of the lamp, he could see from the way some of the edges had darkened and yellowed that, indeed, the tile had been broken before it had leaped from its place on the shelf to attack his poor, innocent toes. That meant it wasn't his fault, which was good.

However, there were several sharp, snowy-edged pieces, that looked like new damage. That was bad. Because even if the thing had already been broken, now it was even more broken. And that _was_ his fault.

J.D. sat back and thought about this new information. The tile was already broken when he found it in the closet. In its original box and broken into pieces. Strange.

He considered whether Chris already knew that the tile was broken. Knowing Chris and how obsessive he was about his stuff, he probably did. Which was a really good reason for J.D. to just put it back and hope that, if for some reason Chris did decide to pull it out and have a look at it, he might not notice that it had a few more pieces now than it had had before.

But J.D. ignored that thought because he _did_ know how obsessive Chris was about his stuff. And here was this tile, riddled with messages from that other team, a team he had led into battle, likely the last words some of them would ever share with him, and it was broken. Chris had left it broken. Broken pieces stored away in a closet never to see the light of day again, until J.D. had dropped it on his foot.

Now the questions really started. Questions like why keep broken pieces unless they are important? And if they are important, why leave them broken? And why hide them away?

He stared down at the broken tile, licking his lips absently. J.D. was a good detective. He could find the answers. The answers were waiting somewhere to be found. And he knew if he started with that complete, undamaged tile that belonged to Buck, there was a very good chance that the truth would begin to reveal itself.

Plus, he told himself, he was going to need that unbroken tile as a template to repair the pieces he had broken. All thoughts of returning the tile to the closet vanished, voices of reason drowned out, as he put his plan in motion

He went looking for masking tape. The cheap kind.

There was only Scotch tape in the kitchen, but the garage workshop had a whole drawer dedicated to tape: masking tape, strapping tape, electrical tape, duct tape in a number of colors. You name it. Glancing at his watch, J.D. took a roll of blue painter's tape and hurried back to his room.

He carefully laid a web of painter's tape, sticky side up in the lid of the box. Then using the lid as a frame and size guide, he began sticking the pieces to the tape in his best approximation of the right order. For the most part, it wasn't that hard. The picture was in the center, and the signatures were on the outside, and he used the different handwritings to guide him. It took him longer than he expected to place all the pieces, but he was relieved to discover that all the pieces seemed to be there. Most of them were fairly large, too. A few were just tiny slivers.

When he was finished, he sat back a little and looked down on a cracked imitation of the original. As repair jobs went, it was laughably poor, but it showed him enough. The cracked doghouse now sat among an array of debris, assorted pieces of junk strewn around the outside. J.D. recognized beer cans, a grenade, some bullets, a steering wheel, and a scuba mask. A neat set of tally marks, totaling twelve, adorned the wall to the left of the door and below the crooked sign that said "Lead Dog". Looking closer, J.D. was now sure those were bullet holes in the sign. And a big bite taken out of the corner, too. Hanging from the peaked roof were a ripped t-shirt sporting the name of some bar, a pair of shorts marked USN, and a lovingly detailed pair of women's panties. Above the dog house, large black letters spelled out "Sit. Stay!" Below the dog house, the pieces read, "You never did learn to obey."

The whole picture was surrounded by a fractured circle of well wishes. Tiny script, nearly illegible scrawls, precise printed letters, and a few places where a letter or two, or a tiny line had been forever lost, reduced to ceramic dust somewhere within the glittering powder that J.D. had tilted into one corner of the bottom of the box. They were all there. A complete collection of voices from the past, and although he itched to forget all about when Chris and Vin might reappear with pizza, and to hunker down and start reading what that other team had had to say to Chris, what they had said _about_ Chris, he knew he had pushed his luck too far already today.

He grasped the ends of his tape web, and gently slid the broken tile into the bottom of its box, pleased at how well the tape idea seemed to work. So well, in fact that he didn't even hear any sliding or crashing of pieces when he put the box back into his duffle bag.

He was just putting the painters tape back into its designated drawer in Chris Larabee's workshop when the flash of headlights told him that Vin and Chris had returned with dinner. Timing is everything, as Ezra often said.

"That was fast," he commented, coming from the kitchen to take the pizza boxes from Vin. He put them on the counter.

"Be faster if Larabee'd move closer to civilization, where a decent pizza place might actually deliver," he growled, and J.D. smiled to himself, knowing the words were directed at Chris.

"How about you quit complaining and get some plates?" Chris retorted, shoving Vin away from the hall closet and toward the kitchen.

"Plates?" Vin muttered. "It's pizza, Cowboy. What do we need plates for?"

J.D. threw placemats down on the kitchen table, followed by forks and napkins.

Vin glowered at him. "We don't need forks neither."

Chris watched the sharpshooter with amusement.

"Sure, Vin," J.D. said. "You want to keep the bottle for your beer, or you want to just drink it out of your hands?"

Chris's quiet snort delighted J.D. for the second time that day. He reminded himself to report that to Buck, who still insisted that J.D. was not funny at all.

"Har de har har," Vin said, scooping up a piece of pizza, placing it on a napkin with a condescending glower at Chris and disappearing into the living room. The television flared into life. J.D. looked at Chris, who scooped up the placemats, plates, remaining napkins, and the pizza boxes and moved dinner into the living room. J.D. followed with the drinks.

Dinner was eaten in complete silence except for the TV. And this time, J.D. realized, it wasn't uncomfortable at all. More like companionable. Easy. Like sleeping in on Sunday morning. There was nothing that needed to be said. And for the first time, J.D. felt like he was part of the silence, a piece of the whole. They all sat there in the living room, legs thrust out before them, stuffed, silent, surrounded by the scattered remains of dirty dishes and dinner, staring at the TV. And it was nice.

But it didn't last. They watched another hour of TV. Then without signal or preamble, Vin got up, stretched, and announced that he was heading home. At the front door, he stopped long enough to trade a few parting words with Chris. Something again about the crankshaft and something else about the west pasture. Since no one included J.D. in the conversation, he pretended not to have heard, calling out his goodbye to Vin and receiving his "See ya" in return.

Alone again, J.D. thought. Only that was unreasonable, since Chris was here, too. So he wasn't alone. Except that being alone in a room with Chris Larabee still sometimes had a way of making J.D. feel as alone as the last person on earth.

J.D. decided to take a turn in the hot tub out on Chris's side deck. And Chris decided to go to bed.

"Good night, J.D." was all Chris said. He did not tell him to lock the doors, or to set the alarm system, or to make sure he covered the hot tub again, or to check the windows, or turn off the lights, or turn down the heat, or to not track wet footprints through the living room, or to clean up the pizza boxes, or any of that. And J.D. was weirdly proud of that.

"You gonna run in the morning?" J.D. asked him, sliding into the hot, soothing water.

"Yup," Chris said from the sliding glass doorway and actually smiling at the prospect. The grin turned into a sly smirk as he asked casually, "You?"

"Hell no," J.D. replied. And Chris laughed again. The third time today, J.D. noted. Not that he was keeping score, of course.

But as soon as Chris left, he remembered half a box of Cheez-Its and realized he would have to do something to work them off. He distracted himself from that thought by returning to his musings about that tile--and why Chris would abandon a team that so clearly wanted him to stay. But he found himself instead, gazing up at the stars and wondering what it had been like to be one of them.

Buck said Chris had been different back then. Not completely. But in many ways, he had changed. They both had. Life has a way of doing that to a man, Buck had said. J.D. would have liked to have seen those days for himself.

The bubbles died down as the timer came to a stop. And J.D., feeling heavy as lead and oh-so-comfortable, dragged himself out of the water. By the time he reached the glass door eight feet away, his teeth were chattering. He paused long enough to slip on his Tevas, then slid inside, still drying himself off. He straightened up the living room, fished the stray Cheez-It out from under the coffee table before setting the table straight again in front of the couch, locked all the doors, and set the alarm system.

He took one last look around the downstairs, satisfying himself that everything was exactly the way Chris liked it. Then he turned out the lights and went to bed. Funny, he mused to himself, his and Buck's town house would look a lot better if either one of them ever bothered to do that at home. He snorted and dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. Like _that_ was ever going to happen.

He hit the mattress, formulating the next step of his plan. He would be able to return home again tomorrow morning. Buck was not expected until later in the evening. That would give him time to search Buck's room. He could always make an excuse if Buck caught him rummaging through storage. After all, he had stuff stored there _and_ a roommate who now had a provable track record in not returning stuff. There was not a damn thing he could think of if Buck caught him looking through his room. Once he had the two tiles safely in custody, he was sure he could start to piece the story together. He drifted off with that confident thought in mind.

He awakened to the sound of voices, well one voice mostly, from the kitchen. A loud voice that clearly had no regard for anyone who might be sleeping at the wee hour of... He pulled his arm out from under the pillow to look at his watch. Ten AM. Shit! Ten AM! How the hell had he slept until ten AM? He jerked bolt upright and began looking for his socks. Ten AM. Hell, the day was half gone. So much for getting out of here early. Why the hell didn't someone wake him up?

He pulled on the first t-shirt he found. Hand on the doorknob, he paused. That was Buck's voice all right, at full story-telling tilt. J.D. would bet Chris was in the kitchen, too. Otherwise Buck was out there talking to himself, which seemed unlikely.

J.D. grabbed his discarded jeans. He didn't much care for appearing in front of his boss clad only in his underwear. The man could make him feel self-conscious enough fully dressed, suited up in his flak jacket, and armed to the teeth. Still fastening his pants, J.D. stumbled into the hall toward the bathroom. The voice was louder in the hall. It was definitely coming from the kitchen.

"Then Jolene calls back and says she can't get to Santa Fe tonight. So can she come over and crash at Candi's?"

J.D. rolled his eyes. Typical. He shut the bathroom door behind him and looked for his towel as the voice continued its narrative. Knowing Buck, Chris probably couldn't get a word in edgewise, which explained the lack of any other voices.

J.D.'s hair was wet when he finally made it to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Buck, dressed in jeans and a ridiculous Hawaiian print shirt, leaning on the kitchen counter and drinking a big mug of coffee. J.D. scowled at him. There had better be more coffee left in the pot.

Chris slouched in a chair at the table. He looked more than half amused at Buck's tale, but his eyes flicked over as J.D. stumbled in.

"I tell you, Chris, this girl's double joints were double jointed..." Buck stopped suddenly. "What?" Then he turned to look at J.D. A big grin spread across the man's face. "Well, hey there, sunshine. Wasn't sure you were still here."

"Move," J.D. growled out. Buck was standing in front of the coffee maker.

Buck grinned and moved aside, so J.D. could get at the pitiful remains of what had once been an actual pot of coffee. Damn.

"Snooze you lose, Kid," Buck said happily.

J.D. glared at him.

And Chris laughed, like he actually thought Buck was funny. Or maybe it was J.D. he found so amusing.

Then Chris saved Buck from a slow and painful death at the hands of a caffeine deprived roommate by sliding a cup of coffee across the tabletop.

J.D. didn't care who saw the relief cross his face.

"It ain't warm anymore. And it ain't fresh," Chris said with a grin. "But it's strong enough to eat through the cup."

J.D. grinned and put the mug into the microwave. He was pretty sure it would taste about like battery acid by the time he finished drinking it, but at this point, it wasn't about taste so much as the safety of his idiot roommate, who had the nerve to look so ridiculously cheerful.

J.D. glowered over at Buck. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Buck eyed him over the top of his nice, hot coffee. "Aren't you happy to see me?" he asked.

"Yeah," J.D. growled back. "If Jolene is still at Candi's and her double joints are double jointed, then why are you standing here in Chris's kitchen instead of still on Candi's houseboat?"

Chris snorted into his coffee.

Buck scowled at J.D. and cast a look over at Chris. "Nosey little shit, ain't he?"

"Seems like a fair question," Chris drawled easily.

Buck frowned.

"The fog lifted; four attendants got food poisoning in Minneapolis, and Candi and Jolene both had to fly out early this morning."

"Aw, bummer," J.D. said without a single trace of sympathy.

"You two have fun together?" Buck asked smartly. And J.D. considered hauling the man straight down to the guest room to show him the havoc he had caused by not returning the snowshoes.

But he didn't. He wasn't ready for Buck and his secrets and his smokescreens and his "I'd tell ya, but I'd hate to have to kill ya" crap. He wanted truth, and somehow he knew he wouldn't get it from Buck.

Most importantly, though, he needed Chris to not know what he had done and what he intended to do. And if Buck knew, then J.D. was pretty sure Chris would know soon after. No matter what Buck said about his top secret clearances and things he wasn't supposed to talk about, J.D. suspected that sooner or later, Buck told Chris pretty much everything.

He did not allow himself to dwell on the worst of the potential consequences of that, the sheer number of things he would prefer Chris didn't know. J.D. forced himself instead to think like the trained agent he was. And there was really no time like the present to see just how badly his plans were busted. He interrupted Buck to announce that they should be able to get back in the townhouse by now.

Buck turned and looked at him. "Okay," he said. "Thanks for letting me know." The polite words did not disguise the irritation in his voice. He resumed his broken narrative.

"So I'll be heading back," J.D. said.

This time Chris turned to look at him, too.

He put his mug down on the table long enough to thank Chris for giving him a place to stay for the weekend.

Chris raised an eyebrow and grunted, amused, perhaps. The way his teammates paraded in and out of his house, J.D.'s was probably the first actual thank you he'd heard in a long time.

Buck rolled his eyes. The same way he did the last time J.D. said they had been "invited" to Chris's. Apparently, once a person got a key, good manners were no longer necessary.

Buck coughed, making it clear that he would _like_ to resume his story.

J.D. turned back to Buck. "You coming?"

Buck made an uncertain little grunting noise. "I just got here," Buck said.

"Oh," J.D. replied. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Buck spent half his life at Chris's place. It wasn't like this was a special occasion or anything.

Chris had cocked an eyebrow at Buck. "You've been here two hours," he said, his voice as even as if he were testifying in court. But J.D. could see the tiny smirk he hid behind his coffee cup.

"Yeah," Buck agreed, glowering at Chris, "But I didn't get to finish telling you the part about the..." He stopped suddenly and looked over at J.D. "You know," he said, stopping again, and looking at Chris as if trying to telegraph him a very important message, "the part about the thing, with the thing and you know, the thing that happened when she..."

"Oh for God's sake!" J.D. exploded. "Do you want me to go upstairs so you grownups can talk?" Buck opened his mouth to protest, but J.D. interrupted, "Not like anybody believes the story anyway."

Buck's mouth stayed right open, completely speechless. And Chris coughed suddenly and violently, spewing coffee into his napkin, and onto the floor. He got up abruptly and moved toward the sink, waving off Buck's attempt to thump him firmly between the shoulder blades while still glaring across the kitchen at J.D.

J.D. gave a satisfied grin to the inside of his coffee mug. That was better. Didn't pay to _always_ let Buck have one up on him.

Chris was still swiping at the front of his tee shirt, which advertised some Mexican restaurant in Austin and was now spattered with coffee-colored dots. He looked at Buck irritatedly. Buck shrugged innocently, as Chris peeled off the shirt and headed for the stairs.

Buck shook his head and grinned at J.D. "Now about those double joints," he said.

"Save it, Buck," J.D. said, gulping down the last of his coffee with a grimace. "I've got more important things to worry about."

"Oh?" Buck asked, more than a hint of curiosity in his tone.

J.D. nearly froze on his way to the sink. Shit! Now why did he have to go and say that?

"What kind of important things?" Buck said, his voice sly and solicitous.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" J.D. said, moving out of the kitchen and wondering where to go. And considering that that remark wasn't exactly the best way to put Buck's curiosity to rest.

Behind him in the kitchen, he heard the distinct thunk of Buck setting down his empty mug.

At a loss for anyplace else to flee to, J.D. headed for the guest room walking quickly, but trying not to look like he was hurrying.

He didn't look back at the sound of footsteps pursuing him down the hallway. Damn all six foot four inches of the man, and his twenty foot legs. J.D. didn't have time to close the door before he arrived. Trapped like a rat.

"Whatcha got going on?" Buck asked, smirking now and leaning in the guest room doorway.

He couldn't exactly pull out his duffel bag now, so he grabbed a button-down shirt from the floor and began folding it, as if he were preparing to pack.

He could think of no suitable answer.

"None of your business," he said hotly. Cheeks flaming over his stupidity and that fact that between "Wouldn't you like to know?" and "None of your business", he pretty much sounded like a guilty five year old.

Buck's chuckle was low and irritating followed by a drawn out and smug "I see."

"Give Casey my regards," Buck said, as he turned away, snickering under his mustache. "I'll be home later," he said. His voice carried back along the hallway, as he added. "Much, much later."

J.D. glowered at the folded shirt. And felt his cheeks get even hotter. Damn Buck and his one track mind. And for that matter, damn his own white boy Anglo-Irish skin and blushing genes.

Then again, he thought hotly, shoving the door shut with his toe and dragging his duffel bag out from under the bed, perhaps this once, it had worked in his favor.

In a fit of absurd paranoia, he packed his dirty underwear on top, in case anyone noticed the odd straight edges and corners in the bottom of his bag and got nosey. He paused in the doorway to the guest room. He could hear the distant sound of Buck's voice. Cocking his head, and standing beside the heat register, he decided that the voice was upstairs, probably slouching in Chris's doorway and smirking like a lunatic. Probably, Buck standing in his doorway and bragging was the biggest reason Chris hadn't returned from changing his shirt yet. And J.D. was thankful because Plan A dictated getting out of the house before either one of them came downstairs.

He was more than halfway to the front door when he heard them coming down. This time Chris was doing the talking. About screws and dimensions and why red cedar was better than pine and something having to do with marine varnish. It would have made J.D.'s eyes glaze over--but not Buck's apparently because suddenly Buck chimed in something about floating cup holders with an enthusiasm that very nearly made J.D. turn around. But he didn't. Not even when Chris snorted and said pointedly, "The hot tub isn't that big, Buck."

Instead he hefted the bag in front of him and continued toward the door.

The footsteps behind him stopped.

His hand was on the front door, mere inches from freedom, and he could feel it, right between the shoulder blades, like the red dot on a laser sight--the penetrating Chris Larabee gaze. He did not turn around. Because he knew it would be written on his face--in big, fat, bold letters--"GUILTY. GUILTY. GUILTY."

Chris said dryly, to Buck apparently, but J.D. did not turn to check. "Seems in an awful hurry, doesn't he?"

"Things to see and people to do," Buck responded, his voice filled with the grin he was probably wearing at his own juvenile joke.

Keeping the bag carefully shielded between his body and the door, J.D. turned to face the two of them where they stood in the hallway, shoulder to shoulder, practically leaning on each other, hip shot, on opposite legs like some weird fun house mirror image, and wearing practically identical smirks. J.D. concluded that if Ezra thought Chris and Buck bickering was bad, he had never had the two of them gang up on him, or he would have a better idea of what hell was really like.

J.D. pointedly ignored Buck and thanked Chris again, knowing the glower that was denting in his forehead didn't exactly match his polite words.

Neither one of them stopped smirking. But Chris's shifted, just slightly around the eyes.

"No thanks necessary." He said it so quietly that it might have been just him and J.D. in that hallway. Or in the whole world.

He was suddenly acutely aware of what Josiah had told him some time ago, that most of what Chris had to say wasn't in the words he actually said. The stolen tile in his bag suddenly seemed improbably heavy, as J.D. cleared his throat, searching for some suitable reply to the meaning in the words that Chris hadn't actually spoken.

As usual, he was too slow. While J.D. was still trying to find a manly-man, cool-guy response, Chris gave one silent nod, crossed in front of Buck and headed through the kitchen toward the garage.

Buck only waggled his eyebrows suggestively and told J.D., "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," before following after Chris.

J.D. snorted to himself. Based on what he knew about Buck and his tall tales, J.D. figured that advice left him a whole lot of leeway.

He waved to Josiah, turning into the driveway, as he gunned his motorcycle out onto the road, relishing the way the wind slapped at him, almost like he was flying. He was almost sorry to arrive home again. But he didn't waste any time securing his bike and heading for the front door.

Once inside, he locked the lock and the dead bolt both.

The apartment had a slight chemical smell, and J.D. moved into the kitchen to open a window, stepping carefully around the small and shiny six legged corpses littering the linoleum. J.D. grimaced. Disgusting. But he got a broom, and swept the bodies into a nice neat pile on the dustpan and then dumped them unceremoniously into the kitchen garbage.

He headed for his room. There were only a few corpses here and there in the hall and the living room and none in his bedroom. That was a relief. For a moment he considered taking time to clean up the rest of the bodies, but he wasn't sure how much time he really had before Buck decided to get home. The bugs were dead. They weren't going anywhere. They could wait.

He took the stairs two at a time, his search pattern already mapped out in his head. There were no nasty bug bodies in Buck's room either. He was glad of that. J.D. took a careful look around. He would give top priority to the closet. Buck stored a number of items from his past on the top shelf. After that, he would search under the oversized Queen bed. His nose itched as he pictured himself belly down and sliding through an army of dust bunnies under there. The lurid thought of scraping through the dead exoskeletons of another pile of bugs under the bed made a nasty chill run up his spine. So he decided that perhaps he should start with the dresser drawers.

Having had no luck with the dresser, a scant ten minutes later, J.D. was perched atop a desk chair he had dragged upstairs from his own room and congratulating himself on his investigative brilliance. He found it, the flat white box, and a quick glance under its dusty lid confirmed that there was indeed a black and white tile inside. It had been stored away at the rear of the top shelf of Buck's closet, back where it would have been hard enough for Buck to reach it, let alone J.D. who had stretched his arm all the way to the back and tugged it forward little by little.

When it came out, it came with a tall, narrow, plain, tan cardboard box on top of it, which rattled enticingly when J.D. gave it a gentle shake. Peering inside, he noted a number of narrow, colored bars. Ribbons, decorations, awards. In short, the kind of medals soldiers wore on their dress uniforms, like the dress uniform Buck still kept tucked away in a plastic dry cleaning bag way, way, back in the far left of the closet behind everything else.

J.D. had suggested once that Buck wear the white tuxedo jacket and black pants for Halloween, if it still fit. After all, didn't women just swoon for a guy in uniform? He hadn't expected Buck to look quite so, well--appalled was a good word for it. He told J.D. rather shortly that _that_ would be an insult to his uniform. And J.D. wisely did not point out that keeping it stuffed in the back of the closet wasn't exactly doing it any good either. Remembering that little incident reminded J.D. to put everything he had removed in search of the box back precisely where it came from, which he did, having made careful note of the position of each box, each bag, and one carefully folded old sweatshirt before removing it. Climbing down, he set the box with the tile and the box of medals carefully on top of the oversized navy blue comforter that covered Buck's big ol' bed. He looked carefully at that closet shelf from several angles before deciding that he had covered his tracks well. He took his chair with him and headed back to his room.

So far, his plan was working perfectly.

Pushing his scanner aside and stacking his light box on top of it, and a short stack of papers on top of that, J.D. cleared a space on his desk. With a satisfied and expectant crack of his knuckles, he carefully removed the lid from the white box he had stolen from Buck's closet.

Another tile glinted up at him, this one's smooth, ten inch by ten inch, black and white ceramic surface clear and unmarred. Almost reflexively, J.D. pulled his desk lamp down closer, bending the hinge and swinging it until the glare was minimized. There illuminated by the soft glow was the same doghouse, graffiti'd with names and surrounded by signatures. He pulled the lid off of the box he'd stolen from Chris's house. The tape had done its job well, and J.D. only had to press a few pieces carefully back into place.

It wouldn't have mattered, though. The similarities and differences in the two tiles were clear enough. The designs were the same, drawn by the same hand and bearing the same tiny set of initials signifying the artist. The same nicknames were scribbled inside it. But the pictures were different.

To start with, this time the sign over the door read "Big Dog". And the eyes that peered from the dark interior were distinctly less threatening. In fact, smug was the word that came to mind. And it struck J.D. with a chill that the cartoonist had managed to capture in a pair of simply drawn eyes a recognizable facsimile of that famous, self-satisfied Buck Wilmington grin. There were no holes in Big Dog's nameplate. Instead, in the spot where Lead Dog's sign bore three bullet holes and a big bite mark, Big Dog's sported a perfectly rendered lipstick print. The number of tally marks was different, too. Big Dog had eight. Lead Dog twelve. Not to mention the stylized World War II era pinup girl drawn on the other side of Big Dog's door. The cartoon debris around the two dog houses had enough similarities and differences to make him laugh. They both had enough beer cans scattered around to make him wonder about the U.S. Navy's standards of discipline. Big Dog's water dish had a snorkel and a pair of swim fins sticking out of it. Two grenades and a neat stack of bars labeled C4 sat beside the dish. Instead of a chain, a coil of wire unraveled from the C4, passing the pin up girl to disappear into the dark depths of the dog house. Another lovingly detailed pair of women's panties adorned the roof beside a pair of boxer shorts adorned with hearts and the initials B.W., and a dangling pair of binoculars.

The words were different, too. Above the dog house, instead of "Sit. Stay!", Buck's read "Down Boy! Heel!" Below the doghouse was cryptically penned, "You play dead pretty good, but your roll over and beg needs work."

J.D. shook his head. Whoever had done the drawings had certainly taken the time to tailor the details to the recipients. Women, beer, surveillance and explosives. Surely Buck was as recognizable in the carefully drawn accessories as in the uncanny way that trademark Buck Wilmington expression was captured precisely in a pair of cartoon eyes. Not much seemed to have changed. Women, beer, surveillance, and explosives still figured prominently in his personal and professional life. And that infuriatingly smug smirk still lit his face often enough for J.D. to recognize the expression. Even though he could not be sure exactly what was meant by "You play dead pretty good," the evidence was still clear. The cartoonist was someone who knew Buck well.

It unsettled him then, as he looked at the reconstructed drawing on Chris's tile. It was by the same artist. The same sure hand that had painted Buck's personality into the accessories and the details had surely taken the same pains in the details on Chris's tile. And yet the closer he looked, the less the pieces fit together to resemble the Chris Larabee he knew.

To start with, the beer cans. J.D. would not have pegged beer as Chris's beverage of choice. J.D. would have chosen a whiskey bottle, and just one, not the half dozen or so scattered about the picture. Sure, Chris threw back beers, same as they all did. But on those occasions that Chris decided he wanted to knock back a drink or two with the team at the Saloon on a Friday, he usually went for whiskey. So, J.D. would have chosen a nice bottle of a decent recognizable brand of whiskey if he were drawing a caricature of Chris Larabee, which he was pretty sure he could never really get away with. Come to think of it, he'd probably leave the whiskey bottle out completely, in case Chris found that insulting.

That, of course, led J.D. to ponder the panties on the top of the doghouse. They were a problem all right. It was no secret that Buck had probably earned the boxers and panties at the top of his doghouse. His own bragging would have earned him that much even in jest. But Chris...

Well, to put it bluntly, Chris Larabee sure as heck wasn't a player. What little J.D. knew about Chris's marriage spoke eloquently of fidelity. But since then? Unlike Buck, Chris Larabee was so guarded about his private life that not only didn't he kiss and tell, it was hard to be certain who or what there might be to tell about. And most people wouldn't have the guts to go digging for the information anyway.

Was there information to be found?

He shook his head to clear that thought, discovering that he really didn't want to think about that at all. Nope, Buck was most certainly the lady killer on Team Seven.

So what had the artist meant by those panties? Had Chris changed so much since then? Or had the artist meant someone in particular when he drew those lacey little panties? Chris's wife sprang to mind, of course. But he nixed that almost immediately. Who would have the guts to insult Chris's wife in indelible ink? Not someone who knew Chris well enough to be familiar with his deadly proficiency with firearms. Someone like that was surely too stupid to be still living.

So the only other explanation was that, back in the day, Chris Larabee had been a player, a lady killer, a charmer, a womanizer, a stud... Was that why Buck called him that? J.D. tried to picture it. Chris Larabee in a favorite bar. Turning on the ol' Larabee...charm? Hard to see. Easier to picture the Larabee glare. Turning on the ol' smooth-talking Larabee patter? J.D. had never once, not once in three years, heard anything even remotely resembling smooth talk, charm, or flattery come out of Chris Larabee's mouth.

Spending too much time pondering Chris's love life not only made J.D. uncomfortable, it also made his head hurt. He turned instead to the bits of junk scattered outside the doghouse.

First he tried the steering wheel sticking out of the water dish and couldn't make heads or tails out of that one. What the hell was a steering wheel supposed to mean? That the man liked to drive? Or thinking more symbolically, that he was a control freak who always had to be in charge? And why was it in the water dish?

J.D. rubbed his forehead with one hand and moved on to the SCUBA mask. The artist had given it a prominent place in the picture, too, right beside a realistically detailed hand grenade. J.D. knew that SEALs were trained in diving and explosives and were supposed to be adept at underwater demolition. But Buck's tile didn't have a mask. It had swim fins and a snorkel. That was a no brainer, though. Buck's vacation preferences tended toward tropical places, where he could lie on the beach, sip fruity drinks, and admire the human scenery and the underwater scenery both.

Did the mask mean that Chris had been exceptionally good at diving? That he liked to dive? J.D. frowned hard, coming up completely empty. At no point could he remember Chris ever talking about diving the way Buck talked about aquamarine seas, bathing beauties, and more than one close encounter with mysterious rays, shy turtles, and at least one good sized reef shark.

J.D. would have drawn a fishing rod for Chris. Fishing was Chris Larabee's idea of water sports. At least that was what J.D. would have said. But then again, if you strung together all the little facts Buck let drop, Chris liked a lot of sports.

For instance, J. D. he would never have guessed that Chris Larabee had ever tried his hand at snowboarding. But apparently he had. And wakeboarding, too, if Buck were to be believed.

And then there was that really vicious game of street rules basketball that had left J.D. bruised, Vin demanding a rematch, Buck and Chris laughing, and the team's smooth talking undercover man, Ezra Standish a full two hundred bucks richer. Plus, Buck had said that a million years ago when they were both in high school, Chris had been a three season a year varsity athlete. So shouldn't there have been some sports equipment on that tile? Is that what the shorts and tee shirt on the roof were about? Why was the shirt ripped?

 _What about a horse?_ he wondered. J.D. would definitely have drawn a horse or a saddle or _something_ horse related. Chris loved horses. He never said as much, but wasn't it obvious in the care he took of the animals in his stable? Plus, other people had told J.D. that Chris really had an eye for choosing horses and a gift for training them. Yet there was nothing at all in the picture that represented horses.

 _While you're at it, why don't you just add a cape, a mask, and a giant red S?_ J.D. asked himself sarcastically.

He pushed his chair back, ripping the tattered edge of a thumbnail off with his teeth. Aggravated. Irritated. Frustrated.

There it was. He supposed it was the real reason he'd taken the tile. It was right there in front of him, quite literally in black and white. In the lines of Buck's tile he recognized his smug, sly, and happy-go-lucky teammate, his mentor, his friend. He could easily imagine that Buck. Younger and rowdier. But still definitely Buck. But this Chris, this young and rowdy, beer guzzling, woman chasing, carouser, was someone that J.D. didn't recognize.

Three years J.D. had spent soaking up all he could about the business of law enforcement from a man who he undeniably admired. He had come three quarters of the way across the country just for the chance to work with him. He had earned a spot on his team. He had been given a key to the man's home. He was sure that he had gained the man's trust personally and professionally. But when you got right down to it, it seemed that he didn't really know the man at all.

Feeling angry _and_ stupid, he swatted the unoffending desk lamp roughly out of his way. He glared at the tile. He glared at both tiles. With both their stupid doghouses, and their stupid dog names and their stupid signatures.

Signatures.

Something in his brain clicked.

He pulled the lamp down closer and examined the names on the sides of both doghouses, scratching them down on a piece of paper he pulled out of the desk drawer, matching them up and discovering they were exactly the same. Exactly. And that was the problem.

Buck's tile was dated nearly six months after Chris's. But there was no farewell wish, no goodbye, no good luck, no message at all from Buck on Chris's tile. That seemed strange--until it occurred to J.D. that Buck had had no reason to say goodbye. He was planning on following after.

He wondered if the guys who signed Buck's tile had known. And he began to read the farewell messages on Big Dog's tile, which led him to read the messages on Lead Dog's tile. And somewhere among all those sincere well-wishes, fond sentiments, and more than a few sarcastic comments and private jokes, J.D. found himself wishing to see the faces of these men, these men who had known that rowdy young Chris, who had wished him well, who had wished he would stay. They couldn't have been much older than J.D. himself when Chris and then Buck had walked away from them.

According to Buck, they would have followed Chris anywhere. Like Vin. Like Buck. Like all of Team Seven. He couldn't imagine Chris just up and leaving them. Or Buck walking right after. He wondered how those guys had felt about it.

He wondered if Buck had photos of them. If he would recognize them by their photos. Would he be able to pick out "Bad Dog" and "Mad Dog"?

Drumming his fingers, he considered where Buck might keep photo albums and how long he might have before Buck got home. Decision made, J.D. scribbled down a list of names on the back of the paper with the dog names and shoved the paper in his pocket. He spread an old blue blanket he stole from an airline and sometimes used as a dust cover for his computer over top of both tiles and the box of medals. Then he left a note for Buck in case he came back: "Gone to storage".

Storage was in a pair of low, flat buildings hidden away at a far end of the townhouse complex. The building was nothing special to look at from the outside, and even less exciting once you let yourself inside, being windowless, and consisting of two narrow, unconnected hallways with floor to ceiling storage closets on both sides of each hall. The complex gave you a key to the building where the storage closet for your unit was located. Once inside, though, any locks you used on your storage locker were entirely your business and your responsibility.

J.D. stood for a moment and let his eyes adjust to the dim light, looking for the light switch. The place smelled of dust and mold. The bare bulb above his head lit faithfully, illuminating a layer of old spider webs near the ceiling, by the light switch, and near the door. The bulb wasn't terribly bright, so J.D. left the door open behind him.

It was noticeably darker in the back row, and J.D. remembered--too late, as usual--how handy a flashlight would have been for looking inside the storage closet he and Buck shared, down there at the end, just about as far from the bare light bulb or the door as a person could get.

He did remember to bring the combination for the lock, though. He peered at the numbers on the carefully folded index card and then turned the dial. God knew how long Buck had been using this particular lock to secure his possessions. Parts of the dial were worn and difficult to read, although--as Buck liked to point out--not any of the numbers that mattered. It was also a little temperamental--although Buck insisted it was not--so J.D. had to give it a couple of tries before it came grudgingly open.

They had a surprising amount of stuff for two single guys and had packed their closet right to the ceiling and as far back as possible with boxes and plastic Rubbermaid bins, none of them labeled beyond the basic "Buck" or "J.D." or "Christmas"--and those bins were only labeled because they actually came out of the closet once a year. It didn't narrow the field much, but it was a start. Unfortunately, since only the Christmas decorations were expected to come out, so, of course, they were all stacked in front of everything else. J.D. gave a sigh and got to work.

It took somewhat longer than he expected to find what he was looking for--and that was really saying something. There were a lot of boxes crammed into that little storage unit. A lot more than J.D. remembered. A lot more than it even looked like the little closet was capable of holding. And once you took the Christmas boxes out, the rest of the boxes and bins were three stacks deep and in no particular order.

Not surprisingly, given J.D.'s luck lately, he finally found photo albums in the last stack, in a box near the top. He had to carry them to the end of the row to get enough light to see them clearly. There were three of them and they were surprisingly well kept. The first one was fairly thin and contained old pictures of a dark-haired child that was unmistakably little Buck, often hamming for the camera, already working on that trademark charm. The second album continued to follow Buck Wilmington through adolescence and ended abruptly somewhere in the middle with his enlistment photo.

The third album contained photos of Buck in his Denver P.D. uniform, some of Chris and Chris's family, and a bunch of people J.D. didn't know at several different barbecues at the ranch. It also ended abruptly, and J.D. went back and checked to make sure he hadn't missed a whole bunch of pages somewhere in one of the albums. But there were no pictures of Buck's Navy days other than his enlistment photo.

Dusty and dirt-streaked, with cobwebs sticking to his sweaty forearms, he resigned himself to tugging and pulling out the last few boxes way in the back of the storage unit and on the bottom. He found what he wanted in the second to last box, packed in among a set of typical sailor whites including the round white hat, some postcards from far away places, and an assortment of strange junk carried back from distant lands. J.D. shook his head. Buck must have shopped at every junk shop on every island in the South Pacific, based on the assortment of carved Tiki gods in varying sizes, plastic leis, cheap-ass souvenir mugs, coconut shell carvings, and even a wooden lamp carved in the shape of a hula dancer and still sporting its hand-painted shade adorned with the ugliest looking tropical birds J.D. had ever seen. But in the midst of it all, a photo album had been carefully packed.

He carried it back to the light just to see, but he was already sure this was the right one. Right on the first page was a picture that was unmistakably Buck and Chris, younger, both their hair a little shorter, Buck a little thinner, Chris a little more muscular, their arms thrown across each other's shoulders, wearing white t-shirts and a pair of smug grins. They were squinting in the sun and framed against the backdrop of a warship hull in standard gray.

The only thing that spoiled J.D.'s sense of satisfaction was knowing that he was going to have to put all those boxes he had spread out the entire length of the hallway back into their tiny little storage unit, which also took longer than he expected.

His arms were beginning to tremble with fatigue by the time he put back the boxes marked only "Buck" or "J.D." and began lifting the heavy Christmas boxes back into place.

"Hey J.D.!"

The sudden shout almost made him jump out of his skin. The caller continued, oblivious to the years he had just frightened off of his friend's life. It was Buck. Damn it! Who would have expected the man to actually come looking for him? And why on earth had he left a note?

"You back there?" the voice called.

J.D. did not swear. Nor did he waste time answering a question that was fairly obvious. Instead he looked frantically around for somewhere to stash the photo album.

Inside his shirt was out. He wasn't wearing a jacket. He had nothing he could tuck it under unobtrusively.

 _Stall,_ he told himself. "I'll be out in a second," he called out.

"You need some help?" Buck called. From the sound of his voice and his footsteps, he was nearly at the end of their row. J.D. scanned the remaining Christmas boxes for one with his own name on it and shoved the album under its lid only an instant before Buck appeared at the end of the row.

Wilmington eyed the five or six bins remaining in the narrow corridor. "You find what you wanted?"

It took J.D. a second to realize that that was a perfectly legitimate question given the state of their storage unit, and he ought not to act suspicious.

"Yup," he answered, and gave a pathetic excuse for a grin. It was still kind of dark back here, so maybe Buck didn't notice how pathetic the grin was.

"Here, I'll give you a hand," Buck said, picking up the box nearest to him, and holding it out for J.D. to take and put in the closet. As "help" went, it wasn't very helpful.

"Chris throw you out?" J.D. asked.

That got him only one a short snort that he was pretty sure was not a compliment to his keen sense of humor.

J.D. slid another box into place.

Buck reached for the next one.

"Not that one!"

It sounded a whole lot more desperate than it probably should have.

"That's the one I need," he explained hurriedly, hoping Buck didn't notice his overreaction.

Buck gave him a funny look, but picked up the other box that was still in the corridor. J.D. pushed it upwards to sit solidly on the bin below it. He turned in time to see Buck reaching for the lid of the last container.

He was proud of himself for not slapping both hands down on the lid and shouting out the "No!" that was screaming inside his head. Instead he calmly and disinterestedly said, "You don't need to open it. The thing I want is on the bottom, and I don't want to unpack it here." Ezra Standish would have been proud.

Buck's hands paused, reversed, and drew away from the lid.

"I'm just going to carry it back to the house," J.D. continued, closing up the storage door and locking the lock with barely a glance at the container.

"Okay," Buck replied, as if he were agreeing with something that J.D. had said. Then he turned right around and headed for the door.

J.D. bent to pick up the bin and realized that he had probably picked the heaviest container in the whole closet. He struggled as far as the door with it, where Buck was waiting impatiently by the light switch. Apparently his struggling did not go unnoticed, as Buck was giving him one of those little smiles that told J.D. he was laughing silently at him. J.D. glowered back but he put the box down anyway.

"Need help carrying that?" Buck offered.

J.D. nearly said no, but if he did that then not only would he have to lug the great heavy plastic container more than halfway across the complex to the townhouse, but Buck would probably start wondering _why_ J.D. was so keen to carry a heavy crate all by himself, which might lead him to wonder just what was in a crate of Christmas decorations that J.D. needed to get at right now, and, knowing Buck, _that_ would lead him to look inside it, which was precisely what J.D. needed him _not_ to do. In that case, letting Buck help carry the bin seemed like the safer path. Besides, that way Buck's hands were occupied, and he couldn't look inside it.

On the way back to the townhouse, Buck paused to inquire whether J.D. was storing bricks, rocks, or perhaps gold bullion in the crate. And J.D. was pretty sure there was more than one muttered "damn, kid" or "Jesus Christ" involved as they made their somewhat uncoordinated and lurching way to the townhouse and then through its front door. J.D. took it from there, glad his room was on the first floor, half carrying, half pushing the heavy bin awkwardly past the living room and into the narrow hallway, noting that, as predicted, the last of the dead bugs still lay exactly where they had been when he had passed them earlier.

Buck disappeared into the kitchen. He didn't appear to notice the conspicuous absence of six legged exoskeletons there. He was far more interested in what was in the refrigerator.

"You eat?" he finally called from the kitchen at the other end of the floor.

"No," J.D. hollered back, tucking the photo album under the blanket, too. "Did you?"

"Sort of," came the reply.

J.D. wondered what that meant. How did a person "sort of" eat?

He looked at the blue, blanket-covered lump on his desk, and wondered whether it looked too much like he was trying to hide something. He decided that he was being paranoid. It wasn't likely that Buck was going to go into his room. Still, he pulled his bedroom door closed just to be sure, but then he opened it part way, so as not to _look_ like he was trying to hide something in his bedroom.

Damn, all this subterfuge was tiring. He wondered how Ezra managed it, working undercover so often and for weeks on end.

He went to the kitchen and pulled out a delivery menu.

"You want Chinese?" he asked, waving the stained paper in the general direction of Buck's face.

Buck shrugged. "Yeah, I guess," he said, one hand on his stomach as if to judge the space available inside.

J.D. peered at him. "There's sawdust on your shirt."

"There is?" Buck said, and brushed a cloud of tiny wood particles off his shirt front to float harmlessly down onto the kitchen floor.

Choosing to ignore that, J.D. picked up the phone. With Buck chiming in here and there, he ended up ordering a dinner for himself and an assortment of odds and ends that more or less amounted to another dinner for Buck. He tried really hard not to glower at that, and wonder why it was that no one accused Buck of being a bottomless pit. Or why it was that Buck didn't seem to gain any weight. And knowing exactly how Buck would smirk, waggling his eyebrows lasciviously as he replied that he knew how to "work off" a few extra calories.

*******

The trouble with Chinese food, as the saying goes, is that an hour later, you're hungry again. There's always a kernel of truth to sayings like these and J.D. had been fighting off that kernel of truth for a couple of hours now.

He had told Buck that he was going to work on a fictitious computer project to which he gave a name technical enough to make Buck's eyes glaze over. Buck had plopped himself on the couch with the remote control where he had remained for the last two hours.

There was a good chance the man had fallen asleep in front of the TV, but there was a better chance that he was sitting there wide awake, intently watching any one of dozens of possible kinds of programs from infomercials to old film noir, from crap sci fi to documentaries and anything in between. And if that were the case and J.D. stuck his nose out there now, his gregarious friend, happy to have someone to talk to, would pepper him with questions about his project, about how he survived his weekend at Chris's, about the current state of his love life, about what was on TV, about the dead bugs, about the Christmas decorations, or just about anything else that might cross his mind.

Making up a computer project with a technical name was one thing, but J.D. was by no means prepared for interrogation a la Buck Wilmington, during which the man--because he had been a SEAL and a cop and a federal agent for a long time now--would sense his discomfort or catch him in some insignificant inconsistency which would pique his curiosity, which would spark his investigative instincts, which would kick his underhanded, left-handed, backhanded and damn effective interrogation skills into effect, and before J.D. knew it, he'd be confessing everything--whether it had anything to do with his current problem or not--and begging Buck not to tell what he'd done.

Jesus, it was almost as bad as when Chris did it. Only Chris didn't bother with subterfuge. He just glared you down and let you know exactly what he wanted to know and left you to imagine the horrible fate that would befall you if you didn't tell him. Where you could hardly mistake Chris Larabee style interrogation, Buck, on the other hand, could be so damn friendly about it that you never saw it coming. J.D. didn't know what was worse, having the truth pretty much scared out of him before he had a chance to think, or having it wheedled out of him without ever seeing it coming. What was certain, however, was that it was best to avoid any chance of interrogation entirely.

After dinner, J.D. had returned resolutely to the photos in the album he had privately christened "Buck's Navy Days", although he could have just as easily christened it "Buck's and Chris's Navy Days". They were there on every page, usually together, often in groups, seldom alone, but no matter the configuration there they were, young, more buffed up and with shorter hair than J.D. had ever seen on either one of them: in camo, in uniform, in civilian clothes, and in some photos, spit and polished, too. Buck appeared on the pages both with and without the mustache, and J.D. couldn't help but think how strange it was to see him without his trademark whiskers.

There was a guy who looked crazy enough to be Mad Dog or maybe Bad Dog, but then they all looked pretty fierce descending down the side of a burnt-out building in a newspaper clipping and in that glossy magazine picture of ten guys in black wet suits and black face paint belly down on a dark beach and pointing a whole lot of firepower right at the camera. J.D. wondered who took the photo staring right down the barrels of those big-ass guns and whether that guy had the same unnerving sensation J.D. got just looking at it.

They all looked pretty crazy, too, in that picture of eight guys posing in front of a group of vintage muscle cars. There was Chris standing up in an open topped Jeep. There was bungee jumping. There was even a photo of guys jumping off an ocean-side cliff that looked way too high to J.D. for it to be entirely safe. They were on every page playing basketball and beach volleyball and sail boarding and practicing martial arts. There was even one spectacular picture of Buck free falling through a clear blue sky, a brightly colored parachute pack still unopened on his back.

There were women, too, here and there throughout the album. Some of them appeared over and over with the same guy. And some of them appeared only once and then disappeared forever. There were laughing fools raising beers and men in tuxes with carnations in their buttonholes.

Unfortunately, what was missing, was the labels on the pictures. J.D. had even gone so far as to pry one up carefully to check. It was stuck down good between the non-acid free paper and the non-archival quality plastic protector on the page. As a result, J.D. had had to use the edge of a razor blade to get it. It was to no avail. Beyond the imprint of the date from the developer on the back of the picture, there were no labels of any kind.

All was not lost, however. It was true that he could not put names with faces. But he could certainly get an idea of the personalities of these men who had signed these two tiles, these terse, funny, sincere, smart-ass, and pensive little notes and messages. He could see them right here in the pages of the photo album at work and at play. They were sharp. They were fit and gung-ho. They were intense and hyped up. They were clearly very, very tight. And even though they were no more than pictures, J.D. found it strange to admit that they were intimidating.

He wondered who had taken the pictures. Not the professional ones, the ones of the guys just being their adrenaline junkie selves. Surely not Buck. Despite the care with which the albums had been put together and taken care of, J.D. could count on one hand the number of times that Buck had thought to bring a camera along on a day off adventure or even a vacation. He could remember even fewer times that Buck had actually returned from a trip with photos, but there surely were a lot of them in the album J.D. held between his hands--more than there were in the album that documented Buck's childhood, more than there were in the album documenting Buck's days in the Denver PD.

He wondered if there was an album of Team Seven. And how many pictures did it contain?

The question unsettled him. Worse yet, he felt petty for asking it, and he did not want to look too closely at what that might mean. Or why he had asked the question. Or on what it meant if there were no Team Seven album--or worse if there weren't very many pictures of the last three years he and his teammates had spent together, barbecuing, camping, fishing, and most of all fighting crime, side by side.

J.D.'s stomach saved him from having to follow this train of thought too far. It let forth a growl significantly louder than any of the three or four others it had given in the last half hour, and he began to wonder whether it would really be so hard to simply go to the kitchen and fix himself a snack. How much could Buck possibly get out of him in those few minutes? And if he fixed something for Buck, too, that had the added power of distraction. Plus, if his mouth was full, Buck couldn't hardly ask him any real questions, could he?

Luck was with him for once. More time must have gone by than he had thought for when he poked his head out the door, the living room was silent. The TV was dark and the sofa was empty, and most of the lights had been turned off. Buck must have gone up to bed.

J.D. breathed a sigh of relief. Well, that certainly made things easy, didn't it?

He took his time deciding what to fix himself. Too bad there weren't any leftovers. He could do with a little "Touch this and I'll rip your arm off." about now. He chuckled at that, head down in the refrigerator. In the end, he settled on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk and carried it back to his room.

He put his headphones on, put his iPod on shuffle, propped the photo album up in front of him, and proceeded to read the inscriptions on both tiles again carefully, and with a good quality magnifying glass, noting the handwriting, the initials, the words, the sentiments and wondering what he might have written in their places, what he would write if Chris were to suddenly announce he was leaving the team. Or worse yet--if Buck were.

"J.D.!"

The spoken words nearly catapulted him out of his chair. Tearing his headphones off, he lunged for the blanket, as a shadow darkened his doorway--his wide open, fully lit up doorway.

"Can I borrow your--" the words broke off.

He stood there stupidly with the airline blanket in both hands, realizing it was already too late. And that Buck was standing there in utter silence--which could not be good. And that feigning innocence was probably not going to cut it. Buck's photo album and his tile were right there, in plain sight, on his desk, after all.

He risked a glance at Buck, whose large frame seemed to fill the entire doorway.

The man still didn't say a word. He didn't have to. For a moment, he seemed not to notice J.D. at all, staring at the desk. Then he moved two steps into the room. Heading right for the desk, he placed one big hand squarely in the center of J.D.'s chest and moved him backwards right out of his way.

For one long second, Buck stood there staring down at the desk top.

J.D. licked his suddenly dry lips.

Then Buck reached out to collect his possessions. J.D. saw the anger vibrate through the wide shoulders and suddenly remembered how formidable an opponent Buck Wilmington could be.

"It's not... I wanted... You see..." J.D. began stuttering.

Buck turned to him then, his narrowed eyes skewering J.D. with a look that burned all the way through. A look he'd seen before, on an op, on a bust, and even leveled at Chris once or twice, but never, _never_ aimed at him.

J.D.'s feet backed up another step, then two more as Buck drew up his entire menacing six feet four inches, and advanced toward him.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded, voice soft and deadly.

J.D. would have preferred it if the man had yelled. Yelling was so much better than that menacing quiet. The backs of his knees bumped against his own bed.

"Where did you get it?" Buck snarled, shaking the box in his hand.

"I--" J.D. started. He stopped suddenly. The box had rattled. He looked down. It was Chris's tile in Buck's hand.

"Answer me!" Buck roared.

And J.D.'s stupefied brain suddenly leaped to attention.

"It was in the closet!" he nearly shouted, dropping the blanket and scrabbling backward over his bed, putting the bed between himself and the bigger man and already formulating a plan to barricade himself in his closet if it came to that.

He could see that wasn't explanation enough to pacify his friend.

He held up both hands and started talking faster. "I went in the closet," he said.

He was trying to answer as fast as he could, but Buck apparently didn't really want to know _where_ he had found the tile, despite the fact that that was what he had asked, because he didn't hardly wait for J.D. to answer. Still holding Chris's box in his left hand, he leaned halfway across the bed, right into J.D.'s face, and growled out, "Why do you have it?"

Buck was furious enough to kill him and bury the body in their storage compartment. And it wasn't even over J.D.'s theft of his own personal property. Oh no, he was going to commit murder over something that belonged to Chris. Go figure.

Apparently having the bed between himself and Buck made him cocky. His face turned bright red, and a crimson flame worked its way up the back of his neck. Let Buck hit him if he had a mind to, but he sure as hell wasn't going down easy. Instead he leaned forward to meet Buck halfway and tell him exactly how he came to have the stupid tile.

"Because you stole my snowshoes!" he shot back.

It had played much better in his head.

On the other hand, it wasn't what Buck had expected to hear either. "I what?" he asked, as his head jerked back. He eyed J.D. as if he were speaking some other language.

"You borrowed my snowshoes," J.D. amended.

The hand not holding onto Chris's box twitched toward him. One finger pointing right between J.D.'s eyes.

"Boy," Buck warned, in the tone he usually reserved for criminals--and stupid ones at that--, "I better get some answers that make sense by the time I count to three, or you won't much like what happens next."

J.D. felt the blood drain right out of his face. He talked faster, raising his hands up in front of him. "It's not my fault," he said, edging toward the closet. "I just wanted my snowshoes back!" He stopped to catch his breath, looking, he knew, far too hopefully up at Buck.

"One," Buck said.

"My snowshoes," J.D. repeated somewhat indignantly. "The ones you borrowed last February. And didn't return."

It didn't have the effect J.D. had hoped. He had hoped there might be some chagrin. Perhaps some give and take. A little 'I screwed up. You screwed up. We both screwed up.' camaraderie.

He didn't like the way Buck's eyes narrowed. He liked even less the glacial calm of his voice. "Two."

He tried again to get Buck to see the logic of it, the words tumbling out just a little faster. "If you had returned my snowshoes, I wouldn't have had to go in the closet to get them. And if they hadn't been stuck in _your_ box, I wouldn't have had to pull your box out. And if I didn't have to pull your box out to get _my_ snowshoes, then _that_ box," he poked his finger through the air for emphasis, "wouldn't have fallen out onto my foot, and I wouldn't have thought I broke Chris's tile. And I wouldn't have had to take it home!" he finished, gulping in air.

Dammit that didn't sound nearly as good as it had when he'd told it to himself.

Buck's eyes narrowed a little farther.

Sweat broke out on J.D's upper lip.

Buck inhaled.

He got as far as the "Th...".

J.D. didn't bother to breathe this time. "Iwasgonnafixit. IthoughtChriswouldkillme!" He pressed his back up against the closet door.

Buck drew himself up and his lips twisted up in a smile that could hardly be called pleasant.

J.D. resisted the urge to wipe the sweat off his upper lip.

"Son," Buck said low and calm and friendly-like, with way too many teeth showing in that smile. "It ain't Chris you got to worry about right here." There was no mistaking the warning--or the threat--in his tone, especially when the smile widened a few more teeth and he added, "At least not yet!"

Shit, shit, shit!

J.D. watched in stupefied silence as Buck turned away from him, never once releasing Chris's tile, and gathered up his own tile and photo album from the desk. He stacked them all carefully in the crook of his arm.

J.D. felt his face flame all the way to the roots of his hair to realize that he had absolutely no possible explanation for having that photo album in his possession. And that Buck hadn't even bothered to ask. After all, what could J.D. have said?

It occurred to J.D. that he might have broken something more than Chris's tile.

He found his voice. "Buck?"

For a moment he thought he was going to be ignored. But then Buck turned, and J.D. wasn't so sure that being ignored wouldn't have been the better option.

"You'd best steer clear," the bigger man said, a sharp edge to his voice that seemed to sock the air right out of J.D. He practically growled as he added, "I'd hate to do something I might regret."

Then he left.

J.D. stared into the darkened hallway after him then dropped heavily onto the bed and stayed there staring into space long after Buck's footsteps had died out upstairs.

*******

J.D. awoke the next morning and stretched his toes down to the foot of the bed as far as they would go, happy to have been rescued from a distant, jumbled and unpleasant dream, already fading away and to find himself comfortable under his own quilt in his own bed. He smiled--until he remembered last night and the last parting glare on Buck's face.

Crap.

He blew out a long breath and slid his feet to the floor. He sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the sound of Buck making noise in the kitchen and thinking over the moment last night when his plan went all to hell.

When he reconsidered it in the sane light of morning, he concluded ruefully, it probably all went to hell the moment he decided to take Chris's tile out of the house instead of just telling Chris that the box fell out of the closet. What would Chris have said anyway? Chris was a fairly reasonable person, after all. It wasn't like he was going to fly off the handle over an accident. Especially not when it turned out, on closer inspection that the tile had been broken long before J.D. got to it.

Of course, the closer inspection was what had done him in. It was the reason J.D. had to have a better look at it, which was, of course, the reason J.D. had decided to swipe the tile, to smuggle it out of Chris's house. To steal it, J.D. finally admitted to himself, rubbing the back of his head and making his hair stick up even worse.

And following that, he winced to himself thinking about it, he had no real, plausible, possible excuse to explain why he went snooping in Buck's closet or his storage boxes, except that curiosity had got the best of him, which wasn't much of an excuse at all.

No wonder Buck was pissed.

He swore to himself.

Then he remembered that it had been Chris's tile that Buck was rattling in J.D.'s direction last night.

Buck was pissed about that, too. And that was a little harder to understand.

He swore again.

Chris was going to be pissed the moment Buck told him.

That thought drove him right up and off the bed.

He supposed he'd better start with an apology. At least an apology couldn't hurt. Buck wasn't a man to hold a grudge, J.D. reasoned. Nor did he tend to stay angry long. There was a very good chance the man had calmed down since last night.

In fact, knowing Buck, J.D. thought hopefully, it wasn't impossible that the man had already moved on to other concerns and wasn't even thinking about it this morning. Not _completely_ impossible, anyway.

J.D. made up his mind to go out there, to be a man, and to admit that he was wrong, completely and totally wrong, and that he was truly sorry about taking the tiles and the photo album. To get it over with.

Then he heard the front door bang shut.

He poked his head out of his bedroom door. A few seconds of listening confirmed it. Buck had left for work, early, without even a "hey", or an "I'm going," or a "You need a ride in?"

J.D. slouched against his doorframe and glowered at the apartment door. He couldn't help but think that this was not an optimistic turn of events.

*******

Work wasn't any better. By the time he got to the federal building, he had not managed to come up with a single clue, piece of remembered information, or even part of any half heard conversation that would tell him why Buck had headed out so early--except that he wanted to catch Chris, who usually got there early. Only one reason for Buck wanting to catch Chris sprang to mind: to tell him that J.D. stole his tile.

As much as fighting with Buck made his stomach turn over, the idea of Chris "Five Kinds of Scary" Larabee visiting righteous wrath down upon his head made his throat dry up and his heart all but stop. By the time he got up the elevator to his floor, the butterflies in his stomach were fluttering so hard, he was pretty sure they were trying to escape.

The bullpen was empty when he arrived. And he was trying to decide if that was bad or good. Chris's door was open, so Chris was around somewhere. There was no note on his computer telling him he was fired. That seemed promising.

There was no Buck either, although his jacket was thrown over the back of his chair and his computer was on. That was not necessarily good if he was off somewhere breaking the news to Chris.

"Hey."

Just the simple greeting nearly gave him a heart attack. He started so badly he grabbed the edge of the desk.

Vin Tanner, ghosting like he did out of the coffee room stood there staring at him.

"You ever think of trying decaf?" Tanner asked, giving J.D. an appraising look.

"You ever think of making noise like a normal human?" J.D. snapped back, his heart still beating in his throat.

A grin flashed across Vin's face before he asked, "You all right?

"No, I'm not all right," J.D. hissed back. "I'm stupid. A stupid idiot. Chris is going to kill me. And Buck is going to help him hide the body."

Vin's eyebrows drew together in an evident attempt to hide the fact that he found whole idea of _that_ not just unlikely but actually pretty funny, which J.D. did not find at all comforting.

"Well," Vin drawled. "he does have a lot of acres..."

"Ha ha!" J.D. said morosely, sliding into his desk chair.

Vin sidled over and parked one hip against the edge of J.D.'s desk. "What'd you do?"

J.D. glowered up at him.

He waited too long to answer, apparently, and Vin began drawing his own conclusions. "Something happen this weekend?"

"You could say that," J.D. muttered back, turning on his computer.

"And Chris doesn't know about it yet," Vin surmised, chewing on his coffee stirrer. "'Cause if he did," he continued thoughtfully, "he would have killed you already?"

Vin appeared to consider that for a second, then gave a shrug. "Cheer up," he advised, giving J.D. a wink. "So long as neither of 'em ever finds out, you got nothin' to worry about."

J.D. looked up at Vin, grateful because he knew that had the situation been fixable, Vin would have been the first to throw in and help him fix it. If it had been fixable, that was, which it wasn't.

"Buck already knows," J.D. said glumly.

Vin squinted at him curiously. "How is it that Buck knows and Chris doesn't?"

J.D. closed his eyes, realizing now a whole other depth to his stupidity. "'Cause I brought it home and Buck caught me."

Vin stared stupefied. He lowered his voice several notches and clarified in disbelief, "You _took_ something from Chris's house? And Buck caught you?"

Evidently, Vin didn't lower his voice far enough.

"Mr. Dunne," another voice drawled out in evident disgust. "I'm appalled."

J.D. jerked and whirled to face Ezra Standish coming in the door. He didn't even try to hide the panic on his face as he peered past Standish out into the hall.

"What?" Ezra asked, craning his neck around casually in the direction of J.D.'s stare. He turned back to J.D. "Our fearless leader and his faithful sidekick won't be back for hours," he said with certainty.

Ezra moved on to his own desk, set down his leather briefcase carefully, unbuttoned the bottom button of his suit and slid gracefully into his desk chair. He smoothed out the calendar blotter, adjusted the angle of his stapler, switched on his computer, and readjusted his cuffs. Then, fixing J.D. with a look of undisguised relish, he folded his hands on his desktop and asked bluntly, "What object of great worth did you pilfer from our esteemed leader?"

J.D. would have liked to protest the use of the word "pilfer", but didn't really have a leg to stand on. Instead, he opened his mouth to explain it away, to make up something that would deflect both men's curiosity, but before he could stop it, the whole stupid truth began first to dribble and then to gush out of him in one long rush he felt powerless to stop.

When the story was finished, he looked at his two friends and teammates, knowing the expression on his face was nothing short of pleading.

There was a second or two of silence. Then Ezra and Vin, seated at adjacent desks, glanced over at each other.

Vin let out a long, low whistle. "Damn," he said.

"I repeat," Ezra said. "Appalling." He looked at J.D. with disgust. "You took stolen property to your own registered legal residence, and you were apprehended with it, red handed. And then, to add insult to injury, when confronted, you simply confessed. Confessed everything!" He turned to Vin and sourly said, "And not a mark on him. Pathetic!"

Vin stretched out behind his desk, folded his hands behind his head, and said pragmatically, "Nice knowin' ya kid."

"Thanks a lot. Both of you," J.D. grumbled. "Glad you're enjoying this. Thanks for the help."

Vin unlaced his hands from behind his head and leaned across his desk. "My best advice, Kid?" he offered. "Take your lumps and get it over with."

Ezra, seemingly engrossed in whatever was on his computer screen, snorted softly and said. "My advice would be to buy a plane ticket and relocate."

"Like I said," J.D. said gloomily. "They're going to kill me and bury me on the back forty."

"Who's getting buried on the back forty?" Nathan asked cheerfully, entering the room.

"I'm doomed," J.D. moaned and put his head down on his arms.

"Why does J.D. have his head down on his desk?" Josiah Sanchez's voice rumbled moments later, as he entered the bullpen.

J.D. didn't pick up his head.

"He's doomed," Vin supplied casually from his desk. From the sound of it, he was chewing on the coffee stirrer again.

"Oh," Josiah replied simply, and continued on, as if that were explanation enough.

*******

Buck and Chris did come back, hours later, as Ezra predicted. They came through the door together, voices low, Chris smirking and Buck snickering about something. Chris nodded a greeting to his team, asked Ezra to bring a file on some case and disappeared into his office.

J.D. didn't realize he was staring, his throat gone dry, until Vin banged his boot against his metal desk and he jumped.

Buck turned, his grin fading and he gave J.D. a long hard look.

"You didn't..." he began, but the words got stuck. He swallowed and gestured vaguely toward Chris's office.

"No, I didn't," Buck answered, never breaking his gaze. "But you and I are going to talk."

He turned away and headed toward the coffee maker.

There was silence in the bullpen as all five men watched Buck go into the break room. J.D. felt his face turn red hot as they all looked back at him.

"By 'talk' he means 'kill'," Ezra translated just loud enough for the other four to hear.

Nathan winced, shook his head, and clucked sympathetically.

"God be with you brother," Josiah offered, turning back to his work.

Vin only shook his head.

Those were the last words Buck spoke to him all day. True, J.D. was busy, busy rushing in and out, busy rushing to IT and to archives, and to labs. He was so busy, in fact, that he wondered whether Buck had conspired to keep him away from Chris. But Buck was busy, too. He was in and out of Chris's office and in and out of the building. So J.D. did not actually see enough of the man to know if Buck was actually speaking to him or not.

He drove home alone, thinking that Buck was as good as his word. Chris had no idea what J.D. had done. And J.D. had tried to act un-guilty, that is to say as normally as possible under the circumstances. Apart from throwing him an odd glance, or two, Chris truly appeared to be none the wiser, his quiet "See ya tomorrow, J.D.," drifted after him as J.D. left the bullpen, like always. And yet that somehow made J.D. feel even lower.

The town house was silent when he got home, and for a moment he thought maybe Buck had not come home, but his truck was parked outside and the stairway light was on, so, J.D. decided, Buck must be upstairs.

He wandered into the kitchen and thought about having a last meal before facing the execution. But after a few moments inspection of the cupboard and refrigerator he realized that he didn't much feel like eating. He took a deep breath and headed for the stairway, determined to face the music, to take his lumps, as Vin put it.

The light was on in Buck's room and the door was ajar.

He knocked.

"Come in," Buck said soberly.

J.D. pushed open the door to see Buck sitting on the edge of his bed, his tile in his hands, tilting it gently in the light of the bedside lamp. A rocks glass half-filled with what might be scotch sat on the nightstand beside the lamp. The photo album lay open on the bed beside him.

Still standing in the doorway, J.D. cleared his throat. "Thanks for not saying anything to Chris," he said simply.

Buck gave a derisive snort. "Don't thank me," he said shortly. "I didn't do it for you." He looked up. "And I don't much like keeping secrets from Chris."

Not really knowing how to answer that, J.D. only nodded.

Buck took a gulp from the glass and put the tile down carefully beside him on the bed next to the photo album and the box containing Chris's broken tile. He looked up at J.D. "What were you thinking?" he asked, a frown wrinkling his forehead, his tone a mix of hurt and disbelief.

"I don't know," J.D. said. "I mean," he added hurriedly, "I know what I was thinking. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense anymore, now that I think about it," he admitted. He sighed. "For what it's worth. I'm sorry."

Buck turned his eyes back down to his hands clasped tightly in front of him and nodded his acceptance of J.D.'s apology. Then he reached out and pushed the tiles and photo album carefully across the thick Navy blue cotton comforter toward the center of the bed. J.D. exhaled a long, long sigh and stepped into the room. He sat down beside his friend in the space Buck had cleared for him.

Neither man spoke for several seconds. Buck reached over and took another, smaller, gulp from his glass then turned his eyes expectantly toward J.D.

J.D. shifted his weight uneasily. "I thought I broke it," he said lamely, trusting Buck to know he was talking about the tile.

And of course, Buck did, nodding his head at J.D.'s words. "Well, it _is_ in a lot of pieces," he conceded, glancing back over his shoulder at Chris's tile.

"Yeah," J.D. agreed, "But if you look..."

It was easier to demonstrate, and he reached for the tile. Buck was faster, though, sliding the box right out of J.D.'s reach, giving J.D. the same kind of look a big dog might give to someone trying to steal his bone, right before he sinks his teeth into the idiot's hand. Like a big dog. Big Dog. The name on Buck's tile. A nickname J.D. occasionally heard Chris call Buck.

Buck still showed no signs of letting him touch the tile, so he drew his hands back.

For the first time, J.D began to consider that his own violations of Chris's and Buck's personal property was only a part of the problem, that maybe there was a lot more here than what he had done, that maybe he had crossed more lines than he even knew about and was deep into territory where he did not belong. Still, he had come upstairs to confess and to apologize, and despite the queasy feeling in his stomach, he resolved to complete that mission.

"Well, if you look," J.D. said uneasily. "I think some of the pieces _did_ break off when it fell off the shelf."

Buck nodded again, almost robotically. He was not looking at the tile, though. He was looking at J.D., a long, penetrating look that made J.D. more than a little uncomfortable.

"Well, I thought I broke it," J.D. said more defensively than he had intended. "And I was afraid Chris would find out and kill me."

Buck's lips twitched minutely. Then he reached around and picked up Chris's box, transferring it carefully onto his lap. He wrapped both hands protectively around the sides of the box.

He did not look up from the tile cradled in his lap, but when he spoke, his voice was as serious as J.D. had ever heard it. "What were you planning to do with it after you got it here?"

J.D. scratched his head, trying to formulate his answer. He had learned a lot about lying in the last few days, not least of which was that he wasn't very good at it, and second that it was a lot of hard work, and he had gained very little from the effort. That alone seemed like a pretty good reason to tell the truth, _if_ the gravity of Buck's tone hadn't convinced him already that Buck wanted the truth--that the truth mattered. Buck deserved the truth. And J.D. valued his friendship with Buck too much to damage it any further.

He sighed. "At first I thought I'd take it home and repair it," J.D. began. "Then I took a closer look at it and realized that most of the damage was old."

Buck peeled one of the larger pieces from the blue painters tape backing. He ran a thumb gently across the surface.

J.D. looked down at his own hands. "And then I started really looking at the pieces."

He looked over at Buck, who had replaced the first piece and picked up a second.

"And I got curious." There it was. The real truth. Almost. "After that, I guess I just got stupid," he admitted, feeling his ears burn red.

Buck nodded, in evident agreement over that last detail, and put the piece he had been fingering carefully back into the box. "Did you tape it together?" he asked, looking over at J.D.

J.D. flushed an even deeper scarlet. "I taped it together to keep the pieces from sliding around when I brought it home."

Buck looked at him curiously, but J.D. cut off anything that he might have said. Better to finish the confession before he lost his nerve.

"After I looked at it, I remembered you had one, too," he continued determinedly. "So I took yours out of your closet, so I could compare the two."

Buck raised both eyebrows.

"And then I wanted to know what they looked like," he confessed.

"They?" Buck asked.

"You know," J.D. said awkwardly, waving a hand backward toward the photo album spread open behind him. "Those guys. Them. Mad Dog, Bad Dog, Rude Dog. All the guys in the Dog Pound." The names sounded silly coming from him.

Buck's lips actually twitched upward on hearing them, his eyes momentarily far away. Then he turned back to J.D. "You could have just asked me," he said.

"I thought you'd say no," J.D. answered. "You know. 'I could tell you, but I'd hate to have to kill you.'."

Buck gave a short sharp chuckle in recognition of himself in J.D.'s imitation. "Fair enough," Buck replied. "You're probably right about that." Then unexpectedly, he said, "Hand me the photo album."

J.D. hesitated a second, in case he had heard incorrectly, but Buck stuck his hand out and waved it toward the open album sitting in the middle of the bed. J.D. picked it up, closing it carefully and handing it to Buck.

Buck took the album in both hands, still not relinquishing the tile in his lap, and turned back to the first page, the picture of Chris and Buck in front of the grey ship's hull.

"You already know Lead Dog," Buck said, pressing one finger down on the picture of the young Chris Larabee grinning out from behind the protective plastic cover. He passed the finger over the image of himself, his lips curving upward in memory. "And Big Dog you know, too."

He turned the page and one by one he began to introduce J.D. to Mad Dog Jimmy Cruz, Bad Dog Kevin Mahoney, Stray Dog Bill Molloy, and others that weren't even named on the tile. One name and one face at a time.

It wasn't even long before J.D. could begin to pick all of them out of the pictures himself. And here and there a story went with the photos. Things J.D. couldn't even believe Chris "Four Thousand Safety Rules You'd Better Follow Or Else" Larabee would ever have gone along with--let alone thought up. Not to mention the practical jokes. It was a wonder Chris hadn't shot one of them. But if the photos were anything to go by, he sure looked like he was having a damn good time.

Even a young Sarah Connelly, before she became Larabee, smiled at him from a restaurant table, seated between Buck and Chris, from a beautiful beach, the sun in her hair, from a park, holding onto Chris's hand.

"Where are they now?" J.D. asked. He was almost afraid to ask it, afraid that the answer would be "I don't know." That over a dozen men who fought side by side like brothers could split up and never think of each other again.

Buck turned back to a page of group photos. He ran his hand across the page and gave a sigh. "Kevin's a lawyer in the suburbs of Boston." He snorted like he thought that was funny, and one by one he began to place each of his old friends. They were all over the map. Some were even still in the service.

He sighed again. Then, one by one, he ran his hand over another half dozen young faces, animated with excitement, with humor, with ferocity, with intelligence. Dead. Every one of them. Gone forever. And J.D., who didn't know them at all, apart from this photo album, two tiles, and Buck's descriptions, felt a surprising sadness settle in his gut.

Buck looked up then, his eyes intense. Like there was something that he desperately wanted J.D. to know but somehow couldn't bring himself to say. But then Buck seemed to change his mind because he closed the photo album again.

J.D. wanted to ask Buck if he still kept in touch with those old friends, his brothers in arms, but it seemed a silly question. Wasn't it enough to know that Buck still knew where they were, that he had kept tabs on them that far? No, what J.D. really wanted to know was whether Chris still kept in touch with them. Or whether Chris Larabee's past, a notoriously touchy subject that Chris went out of his way to avoid, was really dead to him.

But he didn't really want to ask Buck that. Not quite like that. Because Buck might guess at what he really wanted to know.

"Do you guys still keep in touch with them?" J.D. asked finally.

Buck gave him a long look anyway before nodding. "Yeah," he said with a sudden self-deprecating chuckle. "Ain't either one of us great at it, but they keep us in the loop."

So the men in the picture hadn't let Buck or Chris get away entirely either. J.D. felt somehow better for knowing that.

Buck took a long deep breath, brushed his hand almost reverently over the front of his photo album, then gathered up his tile and placed Chris's carefully on top of it. He stood up, the entire pile in his hands.

J.D. jerked upright. "What are you going to do with Chris's tile?" he asked, seized by the sudden irrational fear that Buck was going to take it straight back to Chris.

Buck looked over his shoulder. "Something I should have done a long time ago, Kid," he replied, his smile drooping down at the corners.

He pulled a picture out of his photo album before placing the album on his dresser and heading for the door.

J.D. followed him out into the hall and down the stairs.

He put Chris's box down on the living room coffee table, making room beside two days worth of mail, the morning paper and the remote control.

J.D. watched as Buck took his own tile and the picture over to a small glass shelf in the alcove behind the TV. He stood the tile carefully behind a beer stein he never used and leaned the picture against it. J.D. could not see which picture it was. But he knew that it now rested beside a small framed photo of Buck's mother. Buck stood back, took another look at the display, gave a short nod of satisfaction and then turned back toward the coffee table.

"How'd the tile break?" J.D. asked. Buck stopped in mid step, his hand pulling up short in the act of reaching for the box.

When he looked up at J.D., a strange, intense conflict lay bare on his face. And J.D. realized that Buck both wanted to tell it and didn't want to tell it. Funny, he thought. He knew Chris carried secrets around with him. Everyone knew Chris carried secrets around with him. It was in his face and all the things he refused to say. But J.D. never really thought about Buck's secrets, the things Buck had seen and known and done that he didn't tell or couldn't tell. Buck loved to talk so much, telling stories, schmoozing, chatting people up, it was too easy to think that he had said all there was to say, told all there was to tell. But then there were a lot of things people thought about Buck that weren't necessarily so.

"You don't have to tell me," J.D. said hurriedly. "But I'm willing to listen if you do."

Buck lowered his head, hands on his hips, seeming to consider it.

J.D. rounded the other end of the sofa. He couldn't deny that he wanted to know what had happened to Chris's tile, and why it had been stuffed away in a dark closet, and why Buck seemed so reluctant to talk about it. But he had already invaded far too much of too many people's privacy to push the issue. He perched on the far arm of the sofa and waited for Buck to decide whether he wanted to tell or not and resolved to be okay with Buck's decision either way.

For his part, Buck stood beside the coffee table for a moment, staring down at his shoes, as if he were thinking it over, or trying to figure out what to say.

Then with a long exhale, Buck dropped onto the sofa, his eyes staring vacantly across the living room out the window.

"We made him leave," Buck said suddenly, simply. Staring at the side of Buck's head, it took a second for J.D. to understand that the story of how the tile broke didn't begin with the tile at all. It began with Chris.

Buck looked up, and J.D. swallowed his surprise to see Buck's face so full of guilt.

J.D. slid off the sofa arm and into the nearest cushion, his full attention on Buck.

"You gotta understand something about Chris," Buck said. The guilt never left his eyes, but his lips quirked up in a bitter little smile, and his voice was earnest, like he was asking for something. Asking J.D. to understand this something about Chris.

"He's stubborn and hardheaded," Buck said.

That was hardly a revelation, J.D. thought. He understood that very well already.

But Buck continued. "The mission matters," he insisted. "He'll go through hell and high water to get the job done. You know?"

J.D. nodded. He did know. He'd been dragged through some of that hell and high water himself in the last three years. And not all of it terribly willingly.

"The mission matters," Buck repeated, his voice gone soft, and his eyes turning again toward the window, far off, seeing things that J.D. could never know. "But the men matter more," he said. "Always have, with Chris."

He gave a short snort and gave J.D. a look that was part disgusted. "But that doesn't always hold water with the brass."

J.D. had seen that in the ATF, too. He didn't suppose he really knew the true number of times Chris had taken heat for the actions and errors of his team. Add that to the list of things that Chris didn't talk about.

Buck reached for the broken tile on the table, picking it up again, and tracing the bullet holes in the doghouse.

"He was good," Buck said, pride coloring the nostalgia in his tone and a little smile quirking up his lips. "Damn good." He shook his head as if it were something hard to be believed.

The smile faded.

"He got a reputation for being the go-to guy for missions that were pretty damn near impossible." He looked down at the tile in his hands. "And along with that, for bringing the guys home again."

His tone turned hard. "No matter what," he said.

Buck focused his full attention back on J.D. "But those two priorities--accomplishing the mission and bringing everyone home again--ain't necessarily mutually supportive." His voice took a bitter edge. "The missions got more and more impossible, and it got harder and harder to bring everyone home."

He sighed, again, looking down at the tile, his voice soft, scratchy with unpleasant memories, as he added. "Until it got impossible to bring everyone home."

Buck hesitated then, his eyes wandering over toward the shelf behind the TV, where he had carefully placed his own tile. He got up from the couch abruptly and moved across the living room, like he was drawn there.

J.D. wanted to say something, anything to let his friend know he understood what he was trying to say. But he couldn't think of anything that didn't seem trite. Then again, he wasn't sure he really _could_ understand exactly what Buck meant. Not really.

Standing and staring at his own tile, or perhaps the picture, Buck cleared his throat. "Chris don't have such good boundaries," Buck said, his voice unnaturally flat. The knuckles on one hand stood out white where he gripped the edge of Chris's box. "He took it personally," Buck said. "All of it. It was his job to protect them."

"They were making it impossible for him to protect them," Buck said. J.D. couldn't know who "they" were exactly, but, given the venom in the way Buck said the word, he sure as hell was glad he wasn't one of them.

Buck turned back to him suddenly, eyes as fierce as J.D. had ever seen them. "It was going to get him killed. Or eat him alive."

J.D. said nothing. He wanted to nod or something to show he was listening, but he only stared at Buck, at the way the man's face was lit up with a kind of determination, a kind of defiance that J.D. had never seen in him before. Or perhaps had never really noticed. "And the Navy?" Buck said, appearing not to notice J.D.'s stare or his lack of participation. He gave a derisive shrug. "They'd get all the years out of him they could. Turn him into a burnt out empty shell if he survived it. Then give him the boot."

Buck focused back on J.D. then, his expression hard, almost angry. "We lost two guys on a mission in the Balkans," Buck said. "Two guys who'd been with us since the start. And we just about lost Chris. That's when Sarah and I made up our minds."

J.D. hadn't expected to hear her name, hadn't expected Chris's murdered wife to have a part in the story. He tried to keep the surprise off his face. He needn't have worried. Buck continued without pause, as if once begun, the story needed to be finished.

"He loved being a SEAL," Buck said, his face defying J.D. to say that they had been wrong, that they had _done_ something wrong. "And Sarah and I convinced him to resign, to walk away before it destroyed him, one way or another."

He came back across the floor toward J.D., in measured, inexorable steps. "We took a guy who didn't know the meaning of the word quit, didn't accept defeat, didn't have the words "give up" in his vocabulary and we made him pack it in."

J.D. did not flinch or lean back or shift even as it appeared Buck might just walk right through the couch and him alike.

He came to a halt right in front of him, his boots touching the toes of J.D.'s sneaker and he leaned forward, his eyes intense, and his voice fairly vibrating. "Do you understand?"

J.D., unable to tear his eyes from that gaze, swallowed hard and nodded dumbly.

Buck searched his face, peering at him as if searching for something. To see if J.D. really did understand. Seemingly satisfied with whatever he found there, he straightened and turned away again.

"The tile was a farewell gift," he said casually over his shoulder. "Standard farewell in our platoon."

J.D. glanced over at Buck's tile, shining on the shelf and then at the pieces gathered in the box in Buck's hand.

"Sarah was already pregnant when they moved into the ranch," Buck said, his shoulders sagging a little. "I thought she was working too hard at unloading the moving van, and I took some boxes out of her arms."

He turned back toward J.D., but his eyes were on the shattered tile. "The load slipped out of both of our hands and crashed off the back of the U-Haul onto the concrete steps. The box opened and the tile broke."

"And when we looked up," Buck said, "there was Chris looking at it. He didn't say a word, just continued on into the house. Sarah ran after him, promising to fix it." He shook his head, as if to rid himself of the memory.

"Sarah cried over that tile for most of the afternoon until Chris told her it was just a tile. It wasn't a person. He took the box and put it in the top of the closet in the den."

"It wasn't just a tile, though," Buck said, lifting haunted eyes to J.D. "We made Chris leave them. And we broke their last message to him."

He cleared his throat. "She meant to get it fixed. She really did. But she wanted it to be perfect again. About once a year she'd call around to ceramic restoration specialists. The estimates were always pretty expensive, and they didn't have all that much money, and Chris said it wasn't worth it, so the box would go back on that shelf. The two of us finally decided to stop telling him the estimate, to pool our money and get it done in time for Christmas."

He lowered his eyes and his voice. "She and Adam were killed that fall."

There was silence as J.D. worked his mouth a couple of times, trying to squeeze words past the lump that threatened to close off his throat. "You did what you thought was best," he said.

As consolations went, it was pretty lame.

But Buck gave him a grateful look anyway.

They both looked at their shoes.

"Chris never did see it our way," Buck said with a sigh. "He thinks he failed them, that he ran out on them."

Again J.D. saw the perplexed expression on Chris's face as he tried to answer J.D.'s question: "Why did you leave the SEALs, Chris?" Now he understood the reason for that expression. Chris hadn't wanted to leave at all. Not while his country needed him and his men needed him more. The people who loved him most had pulled him away to save him.

He looked up at Buck. Even now, he knew Chris's penchant for not knowing when to quit, his sometimes frightening disregard for life and limb in the course of doing his job or protecting his team. How downright hell bent Chris could get sometimes. And it slowly dawned on J.D. that maybe Chris, who "didn't have such good boundaries", needed a protector--needed a Big Dog--to watch out for him.

"You probably saved him," J.D. said firmly.

Buck nodded at that, as if still trying to convince himself.

"It's important to know when to stage a tactical retreat," J.D. said, almost defensively, borrowing a bit of wisdom from Ezra Standish.

Buck gave a short, sharp snort. "At least I taught him that," he said. "He staged a tactical retreat all right, right out of his house, right out of his job, and right out of my life when Sarah and Adam died."

J.D. peered at Buck carefully, shocked to see his lips twitch up into a smile at that, a sad smile, but a real one.

Buck shrugged. "It took him five months. And when he made up his mind, he was gone like that," Buck snapped his fingers. "It was the first act of deliberately selfish self preservation I ever saw Chris take."

He grinned.

And J.D. grinned back, rising to his feet.

They stood there grinning at each other over what was probably one of the most painful episodes in Buck Wilmington's life. And Buck could grin about it because he understood that, cruel or not, Chris was better off for having made his escape.

J.D. shook his head.

Chris Larabee was a lucky man to have a friend like Buck Wilmington. And now he understood, too, something of Buck's answer to why he left the SEALs. "I just followed Chris," was Buck's stock answer. It made so much more sense now that J.D. finally understood just a little of the past that bound Chris and Buck so tightly together. And the sacrifices they had each made for their country, for their friends, and for each other.

He fished his wallet out of his pocket.

"I'd like to help you fix that tile," J.D. said. "For Chris," he added.

He peered in a moment at the dearth of cash inside it and then threw caution to the wind. What the heck, he thought, tossing a credit card down on top of the broken tile.

"Give it back when you're done," J.D. said pointedly. Then he turned and went off to his room, leaving his credit card, carte blanche, in Buck Wilmington's careful hands.

He didn't worry about the price.

Chris Larabee was worth it.

Just ask Buck.

*******

Three weeks, half an op, 53 cups of coffee--give or take--, two goofs at Chris's house, and one application of a really good stain cleaner later, J.D. gawped at the credit card bill in his hand. It was amazing what the services of a good ceramic restoration specialist could cost.

He kept his mouth shut, though. He kept his mouth shut and went on with his days like it wasn't sitting there in his "to pay" box waiting to gobble up most of his next paycheck because Buck had spent two Sundays and three Saturdays in a row at Chris's house, and now there was a new red-cedar bench surrounding the hot tub, and a matching new bench rail traveling the perimeter of the newly expanded deck. And Buck had bragged happily about owning a piece of that deck after all the work he put into it. And because, unbelievably, there were three small square boards mounted on Styrofoam so they would float, each one with a glass-sized hole cut out of the center, which Buck thought he ought to get a patent for designing. And because Buck _insisted_ J.D. come along to view the finished product.

On the pretense of checking on the free anti-spyware software he had installed on Chris's computer, J.D. snuck away from Buck's bragging out on the porch, and Vin's lying bare-chested out on the bench rail, t-shirt snaked through a belt loop in his cutoff jeans, and Josiah's contented sigh as he test-drove one of the drink holders from inside the bubbling hot tub.

He found what he was looking for right away, there on the mantel above the den fireplace, shiny white and vivid black, a ten by ten ceramic tile with a doghouse on it, surrounded by cartoon debris and tiny signatures. Holding it carefully in both hands, he tilted it in the light. The restorer was good, all right. You couldn't even see the cracks in this light. Of course, for what she had charged, she had _better_ be that good.

"J.D.!" Buck's voice hollered from the living room. "Get your ass out here."

He jerked and for one horrifying instant, he feared he might drop the tile. But he didn't. He put it carefully back on the shelf, holding it there for a second, just to be sure.

"What for?" he hollered back. But he went out into the living room all the same.

Chris and Buck were leaning side by side on the waist high railing that edged the older part of the deck. Legs crossed, elbows on the rail, bodies canted slightly toward each other, silhouetted in the late afternoon sun, all dark limb shapes and white teeth parted in smug grins.

"Vin here wants a rematch of that basketball game," Buck said happily.

Just for a minute, instead of the yard behind them, instead of the pasture beyond, J.D. saw the grey hull of a Navy ship and black face paint. He saw their identical smirks. And that weird fun house mirror image again.

"Sure," J.D. said, pointing at Chris and Buck. "As long as you two play on separate teams."

Both men's eyebrows quirked up as they glanced at each other.

Buck laughed and reached out to snare J.D.'s head in the crook of one arm. "I'm gonna kick your butt, Larabee," he said.

"That'll be the day, Wilmington," Chris replied, looking at Vin and jerking his head toward the driveway.

And J.D. grinned like a fool, knowing that somehow, even on separate teams, he and Vin would be the only ones who got their butts kicked. Buck and Chris would always be on the same side.

No matter what.


End file.
